A PERVERT was given a six-year prison sentence after he was caught grooming two fictitious girls over the Internet from his Hampshire home.

John Blatchford will be spending the next six years behind bars after sending sordid pictures and videos in an attempt to lure an undercover officer to provide his two daughters, aged seven and nine, for sex.

Southampton Crown Court heard how the 35-year-old had unwittingly sent pornographic images to the officers after contacting them through a website used by paedophiles to exchange sick images and videos of children.

Prosecutor Chris Stopa said: “There was an exchange of email that in effect showed that the defendant was interested in the two daughters of an undercover officer.”

He added: “The graphic exchange culminated with the offer [of sex] with the two girls.”

The court heard how in November 2013 Blatchford, from Blackwater Mews, Totton, was told that he could ply the girls with drink in order to get them to have sex with him.

Officers planned to arrest him in Kent after he decided to head there but he didn’t go due to railway problems in Southampton.

A jury convicted him in September of one count of sexual grooming and seven counts of distributing 18 images and videos of children.

In 2008 Blatchford was previously jailed for 12 months for downloading 2,500 sordid images on to a memory stick at a friend’s house.

Recorder Stephen Climie said that Blatchford posed a “significant danger” to the public.

He said: “By the end of last year you had found a website which enabled you to view and exchange effectively information of an obscene nature relating to sexual activity with children.

“In the first instance these exchanges were little more than that, however you took every opportunity to drive the process forward and found yourself in an exchange with these officers who had identified this particular website which was encouraging activity between paedophiles.”

Without going into detail, Recorder Climie added that the exchanges were “graphic in what was being planned” and were “planned in detail” with “considerable enthusiasm” on the part of Blatchford.

Blatchford was sentenced to a total of six years in jail, put on extended licence for four years, and ordered that he be placed on the sex offenders’ register.

He is prohibited from being alone with any child under 16 unless he is related to them and even then under supervision.

He is also prohibited from using the Internet without supervision, prohibited from deleting his Internet use history or using any software or technology to hide Internet use. He must also pay a £120 victim surcharge.