A PAEDOPHILE caught by an online vigilante group as he went to meet a schoolgirl walked free because he was offended against as a child.

Phillip Knight, 42, chatted to a person he thought was a 14-year-old calling herself ‘Little Laura’ on an online forum, a court heard.

The Hartlepool pervert sent her explicit sexual messages and arranged to meet at a place close to Savile Park in Halifax, West Yorkshire.

But Teesside Crown Court heard that he had really been talking to a member of Online Paedophile Investigators (OPI), based in Yorkshire.

When he turned up for the meeting in late-August 2013, Knight was confronted and filmed, and the footage was put up online on YouTube.

Sophie Drake, prosecuting, said there had been a flurry of messages between Knight and 'Little Laura' on two social networking sites.

He sent things such as "can't believe you are going to meet me and have sex" and spoke of getting a hotel room to avoid her parents knowing.

Miss Drake said he wrote of taking her virginity, "bottom-slapping" and other sexual acts, and agreed to bring alcohol with him on his visit.

When he was arrested months later, Knight said if he had got there and there was a 14-year-old, he would not have had sex as "it is wrong".

His barrister, Andrew Stranix, today (Thursday) told the judge, Recorder Bryan Cox, QC: "There was no actual child who was being communicated with.

"Effectively, this is an organisation acting outside the police who set themselves up in order to expose contact of this sort.

"The defendant, at that particular stage of his life, had recently had brought back to him very significant issues from when he was young.

"The perpetrator in relation to those matters received a substantial prison sentence. It is clear the defendant has or had issues.

"He has significant issues which are going to have to be dealt with in relation to this offending and his life in general terms."

Knight, of Carlton Street, Hartlepool, admitted attempting to meet a child following sexual grooming and got a two-year suspended sentence.

He was also put on the sex offenders' register for ten years and was ordered to undergo supervision and the sex offender treatment course.

Mr Recorder Cox said he was taking "an exceptional course" because of his good character and "what happened to you during your childhood".

He added: "It seems to me there is a realistic prospect that with appropriate intensive help, you can be assisted and the public thereby better protected.

"With the public interest very much in mind, as well as your own personal position, I am persuaded it is appropriate in what I regard as an exceptional course by virtue of your history and what happened to you."

The court heard that OPI uploaded a fake account to the social networking service using a photograph of a little-known American child actress.

Knight spoke to ‘Little Laura’ from August 13 to August 27 – the day he drove to meet her in a car park in the Manor Heath area of Halifax.

Messages showed that from virtually the outset she said she was 14, and Knight instigated most of the contact and quickly turned it sexual.

The judge told him: "I have no doubt you will have put into effect those matters you expressed on the internet had you been given an opportunity to do so."