Luke Sadowski

In 2002, the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) placed an online advertisement offering special sex tours with children as young as eight. This was part of a covert US Law Enforcement Agency (LEA) initiative to identify and prosecute sex offenders and paedophiles who were using the internet to abuse children. Luke Sadowski, an 18-year-old trainee school teacher, used the name ‘Ben Smith’ to reply to the advert and to ask further details and the price for a girl about ten years old to go ‘all the way’.

When he realised the advert was US-based, Sadowski replied that he could not travel to the US. Through the US embassy, the ICE contacted New Scotland Yard's (NSY) Paedophile Unit to pursue the operation with Sadowski. However, UK law had yet to appropriately recognise such a crime, and so UK law enforcement agencies were unable to authorise and deploy such covert officers. Nonetheless, NSY used a covert officer to convince Sadowski that his request could be arranged in the UK. On Friday, 4 October 2002, Sadowski, from Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire, travelled to a London hotel thinking he was going to meet a nine-year-old girl, telling the covert officer, ‘I am not going to mistreat her, not too much, if you know what I mean’ (quoted in BBC News, 2003).

Instead, Sadowski met the covert officer and was arrested and charged for inciting ‘… another to procure a child under 16’ and possessing an imitation gun. He was sentenced to 18 months for each offence, with sentences to run consecutively (BBC News, 2003). At the time, he was about to start his placement in a primary school with 5- to 11-year-old pupils. Due to inadequate legislation in the UK at the time, Sadowski did not go on the Sex Offender Register. This became a landmark case that led to the new Sexual Offences Act (SOA) 2003 that addresses some of the difficulties in Sadowski's case, and allows the sentencing of an offender to as much as 14 years in prison. Later on, Sadowski changed his name to ‘George Richards’. Fast forward to shortly before 9am on Thursday, 12 September 2013, and Richards attempted to abduct a 10-year-old girl off a footbridge on her way to school. His attempt was thwarted by an off-duty officer.