A MAN with a mental age of eight was prosecuted after being caught by online paedophile hunters posing as two 13-year-old girls.

Stuart Thompson, 52, is today a registered sex offender after he contacted Facebook profiles set up by the vigilante group, York Crown Court heard.

The Recorder of York, Judge Sean Morris, said: “He is younger mentally than the so-called children he thought he was contacting.”

Paul Newcombe, prosecuting, said Thompson sent the "girls" a series of sexual messages. When he went to meet one of them, the vigilantes revealed themselves and reported him to police. He told police he had no intention of having sex with the two “teenagers”.

“He said he was sorry and wouldn’t do it again. He wanted them more as a friend,” the barrister said.

Thompson lives in sheltered accommodation in central York. Medical evidence before the court gave his mental age as eight years and 10 months.

He pleaded guilty to three charges of attempting to incite a child to engage in sexual activity and two of attempted sexual communication with a child. His pleas meant he was automatically put on the sex offenders’ register.

“To send you to prison would be out of the question,” the judge told Thompson.

He passed a three-year community order with 60 days’ rehabilitative activities and made a five-year sexual harm prevention order restricting Thompson’s use of the internet.

Thompson had told police he was no longer on Facebook.

His solicitor advocate Graham Parkin said he wasn’t criticising the vigilantes who were unaware of Thompson’s mental age.

Psychiatrists had decided that though he was fit to plead, Thompson probably couldn’t cope mentally with a trial.

A CPS spokesman said: “The CPS prosecutor in this case was satisfied that the Code for Crown Prosecutors was met in that there was sufficient evidence to provide a realistic prospect of conviction and it was in the public interest to charge.

“The conversations that the defendant Thompson engaged in demonstrated a level of understanding and intent sufficient to establish the offences charged.

“He pleaded guilty to the offences and had the benefit of legal representation throughout the criminal justice process, so that fairness was ensured.”