A PAEDOPHILE has been jailed after assuming the identity of a young boy and trying to trap a girl.

Simon Clarke, of Abingdon Road, Oxford, admitted grooming a girl under the age of 16 for sexual purposes, breaching a sexual offences prevention order and performing an act of outraging public decency.

The offences relate back to October and November last year, when 27-year-old Clarke first made contact with the schoolgirl from Barnet, who cannot be named for legal reasons.

She had met a boy named Jimmy at a party and by coincidence she received a call the next day from a number she did not recognise.

Police said the girl asked if it was Jimmy and the man, who was later found to be Clarke, said “yes” and used the opportunity to pretend that he was the boy.

Using the alias of Jimmy, Clarke began to regularly phone and text the girl and set up a chat room account using the name Cybersnake.

After a barrage of increasingly explicit calls and texts, he persuaded the girl to meet him at London’s Hendon Central station.

Clarke told her he was a friend of Jimmy and said she should sit with him.

But she recognised his voice as the person calling himself Jimmy, ran off and told her mother. They then reported it to the police.

An investigation found Clarke had an “extensive history” of sexual offences and was already on bail for another sex crime.

A search of his home found phones containing images of young girls and a list of young girls with their telephone numbers next to them.

Detectives said Clarke had been “prowling the internet” using Facebook and other social networking sites to collect the names and numbers.

He was jailed for two years at Wood Green Crown Court.

The victim’s mother praised the work of the police saying they “stopped this being a scary or frightening experience”.

She added: “I am thankful that my daughter has made a full recovery and she is wiser as a result of this experience.

“I don’t want this to happen to anybody else and I am glad we told the police.”