Barrister Guy Sims jailed for travelling to Portsmouth in bid to meet girl, 13, with condom, cider and camouflage net in his car

Civil lawyer Guy Sims, 53, was yesterday jailed for more than three years after using social media sites MyLOL and Kik to talk with two people he thought were 13-year-old schoolgirls. They were police officers.

Sims posed as an 18-year-old using the names markbatx and markviva online, and drove from Cambridge to the city on September 27, 2017, in a bid to meet one of the girls.

Instead, he was met by police who arrested him and found the items in his car. Sims had also been planning to meet another of the fake girls on his way home, or on the way to Portsmouth.

Now he has been jailed at Oxford Crown Court for three years and six months after jurors convicted him of three charges of arranging or facilitating commission of a child sex offence.

The third charge related to him speaking with a third person he thought was 13 in October 2019, with him then using the names Yo Sarami and Danny.dan online.

Sims, of Castle Lane, Bedford, planned to meet her in Oxford. All of this took place while he was being investigated for the Portsmouth crimes.

Detective Chief Inspector Philip Attwood, of the South East Regional Organised Crime Unit, said: ‘This is the conclusion of a case in which Sims engaged in conversation of a sexual nature and arranged to meet up with those who he believed to be three teenage girls with the intention of carrying out child sexual abuse.

‘Sims, worked as a civil barrister, and should have recognised the consequences of this offending. He demonstrated that he was prepared to go to great lengths and travel across the country to Portsmouth, to Guildford and to Oxford to engage in depraved sexual activity with children.

‘He repeatedly engaged with the profiles of those he believed to be teenage girls online, and the threat he posed would have continued had it not been for the continued and dedicated efforts of those working for Serocu.

‘Law enforcement operates across the Internet and we are committed to ensuring those who use this means of communicating with those they believe to be children to arrange sexual abuse are brought before the courts to face justice.’

Police said Sims is set to be barred from working as a barrister.

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