WATCH: Paedophile who travelled 300 miles to meet 14-year-old confronted by vigilantes

Roger Lee, of Pewsey, Wiltshire, thought he was chatting to a teenage girl called Rebecca on the Badoo website.

He sent her intimate pictures of himself and when she told him her mother was going away, he went to Newcastle-upon-Tyne -  300 miles from his home - on October 9 last year.

When he got to the city's Millennium Bridge, the 45-year-old met vigilantes, calling themselves Dark Justice, who were armed with a video camera.

Now Lee, who previously got a 12-year-old pregnant, has been jailed for two years and four months after he admitted attempting to meet a child following sexual grooming.

Judge Sean Morris, at Newcastle Crown Court, told him: "You were caught by internet vigilantes who pretended to be a girl.

"You entered into a conversation with them on the internet and they pretended the female was 14 and you went for it.

"You arranged to come to Newcastle from Basingstoke to have sexual intercourse with a 14-year-old child. 

"That is extremely serious." 

The judge said Lee was a danger to children but his sentencing powers were limited due to the fact there was not a real child involved in the offence.

He said: "There was in fact no child involved at all, which limits the category into which your offending falls.

"That will be quite difficult for some people to understand and I don't blame them.

"I'm firmly of the view that you are a dangerous individual to young children."

The court heard Lee, using the moniker ForHire, contacted Rebecca in October on Badoo, which is meant for over-18s.

Prosecutor Tim Gittins said the two anonymous Dark Justice vigilantes set up a trap by pretending to be the teenager.

Mr Gittins said: "These men, who describe themselves as undercover journalists, worked together in order to set up a sting operation to identify and catch paedophiles.

"They set up a false female profile on internet website Badoo.

"He stated he liked young girls and had previously had a relationship with a female aged 12.

"The messages continued over several days and began to become sexually explicit, at the defendant's instigation and he sent a picture of his penis.

"She then said her mum was going away on October 8 and he couldn't get up here fast enough."

When he was confronted by the two men, he fled the scene.

After running off, Lee sent a text message saying he was going to kill himself before being arrested on the A1 heading south.

Lee pleaded guilty to attempting to meet a girl following sexual grooming. 

As well as the two year and four month jail sentence, he was given an extended licence until 2020, must sign the sex offender register indefinitely and was given a sexual offences prevention order.

Andrew Walker, defending, said: "This was not entrapment but it was a set up, it was a sting operation. That means there was no child anywhere near this offence or this offender. This was a website for adults and it was not even a dating website, although it was used for those purposes.

"Clearly the objective of the young men on the other side was to perpetuate the conversation and give him the opportunity to propose the activity in the way he did." 

The two men behind Dark Justice were at the sentencing hearing.

Afterwards, the duo, who wish to remain anonymous, said they don't consider themselves vigilantes but "concerned citizens of society".

One said: "Every day we were picking up the paper and it is paedophile, paedophile, paedophile. 

"We want to prevent this sort of thing from happening, see a change in the law so that internet users have to identify themselves by credit card."