A man with a foot fetish has been given a suspended jail sentence after he encouraged children he befriended online to send him pictures of their feet.
Aaron-James Leonard, 22, pleaded guilty to five charges, including that he sought images from boys and girls as young as 12, offering to pay some of them, in order to satisfy his sexual attraction.
Norwich Crown Court was told he was arrested in May 2020 after police became aware of his activities and visited his home, seizing his iPhone.
Prosecutor Andrew Thompson said forensic examination had found a series of sexualised messages with youngsters in the chat rooms of gaming platforms.
He said: “He has a particular sexual interest in feet - the soles of feet in particular - and in the chat he was making requests for images of feet.”
In one message he asked a 12-year-old boy to send him a picture in return for £10 while in another a 13-year-old was lured with the offer of online gaming credits.
His messages to a 13-year-old girl also encouraged her to take off clothing, pose sexually and send him indecent images.
The court was told Leonard, from King's Lynn, still lives with his parents, was “insular and immature” and was awaiting a diagnosis of adult autism.
Charles Myatt, mitigating, said: “There are some 20-year-olds who are old for their age and there are some that are very young for their age, and the defendant falls into the latter category.”
He said Leonard spent many hours chatting while online gaming but only a tiny fraction of his messages were sexualised.
He added: “In my submission this was not grooming in the classic sense.”
Sentencing him to two years imprisonment suspended for two years, Recorder John Hardy said: “You have, and I make no moral criticism of you, an unfortunate fetish and are sexually aroused by feet.
“You have assumed that fetish to the extent that you ensnared three young people to send you photos of their feet for reward.”
Leonard was “isolated and insular” and found it difficult to make “ordinary social contract with your own age group”, he added.
Imposing a 10-year sexual harm prevention order, he also ordered he attend a programme to address his sexual behaviour.
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