A Suffolk primary school teacher accused of having online chats about sex with adult decoys pretending to be schoolgirls has been warned he is facing a jail sentence after being convicted by a jury.

Before Ipswich Crown Court on Tuesday, September 17, was 49-year-old Richard Cook, formerly of Ipswich.

Cook, now of Lambert Lane, East Cowes, denied attempting to cause a child to watch a sexual act, three offences of attempting to cause a child to engage in sexual activity and an offence of arranging or facilitating a sex act he intended to do, namely engaging in penetrative sexual activity with a girl under 16.

All the offences related to conversations he had with adult decoys posing as three girls aged between nine and 14.

The offences were committed in July 2019.

Cook also denied three offences of making indecent images of children on or before July 29, 2019.

The charges related to him making one indecent image and five videos in the most serious level A category, three images and 10 videos in category B and 19 images and five videos in the least serious level C category.

A jury unanimously found him guilty of all eight offences.

Judge Nicola Talbot-Hadley adjourned sentence until October 25 for a pre-sentence report and ordered Cook to sign the sex offenders' register.

She remanded him in custody and warned him that he was facing a prison sentence.

During his trial the court heard that Cook told an undercover police officer who was pretending to be a 13-year-old girl that he wanted them to be boyfriend and girlfriend and arranged to meet her at the entrance of Christchurch Park

However, the meeting didn’t happen as members of a paedophile hunter group had already intervened and confronted Cook at his home.

This arose out of Cook’s conversations with a member of an online paedophile hunter group posing as a nine-year-old girl during which he supposedly sent her a picture of his penis and asked her to send him a video of her touching herself intimately.

Members of the group traced Cook to an address in the Nacton Road area of Ipswich and confronted him there.

The group alerted the police about what they were doing, and Cook was arrested.

Officers seized his phone and when it was examined they found 40 indecent images and videos of children on it, said Miss May.

The court heard that following his arrest Cook denied sending the messages to the decoys posing as children and said his phone had been hacked.

He denied downloading the indecent images and videos of children found on his phone and said his interest in children “started and stopped with teaching them”.

Giving evidence Cook denied loading the Kik Messenger app on his phone and having sexual chats and sending sexually explicit pictures to adult decoys and an undercover police officer posing as children.

He claimed his partner had wanted him out of her life and he believed she had installed the Kik messenger account to get him into trouble although she denied this when she gave evidence last week.