Teacher caught in police sting over child sex messages

A Carmarthenshire teacher has been sentenced after sending sexual messages and videos to what he believed was a 12-year-old boy – but was actually an undercover police officer.

Hefin Davies, 32, from Cwmgarw Road in Upper Brynamman, thought he was chatting with a child when he initiated contact on the dating site Hornet using the fake name “Eric” in October 2024. The profile made clear it was a 12-year-old, and when Davies acknowledged the huge age gap, he told the account it didn’t concern him.

What followed was a series of deeply inappropriate exchanges on Snapchat. The court heard Davies sent multiple explicit photographs and videos, including images of his erect penis and videos of him masturbating. He also shared images and videos of young males engaged in sexual activity, and requested pictures in return.

When police knocked on his door on 24 October, Davies panicked. Officers found him attempting to factory reset his phone, claiming it was just “updating” – but investigators quickly saw through the lie. He’d been desperately trying to destroy the evidence.

A search of his home uncovered something equally concerning – a computer magazine with articles about the Tor browser, how to hide your location online, download files anonymously, and create fake identities. All the hallmarks of someone who knew exactly what they were doing.

At Dafen police station, Davies refused to hand over his PIN and went “no comment” throughout his interview. He later pleaded guilty to attempting to engage in sexual communication with a child, though a charge of attempting to pervert the course of justice was dropped.

His defence barrister, Scott Tuppin, painted a picture of a university-qualified young man “with a bright future ahead of him” who had become “desensitised to pornographic material” and engaged in “criminal and high-risk behaviour”. While Davies had been “technically employed” as a teacher, he wasn’t working with children at the time of his arrest.

The barrister told the court Davies now understands “his days of working with young people are behind him; his days of being in a position of trust with young people are behind him”. He said his client was willing to engage with counselling “to get to the bottom of why he behaved in the way he did” and had “extremely good” prospects of rehabilitation.

Judge Huw Rees didn’t mince words during sentencing. He told Davies it was only by luck that his “filthy conversations” had been with a police decoy and not a real child. The judge noted that in the small community of Upper Brynamman, where Davies was known as a teacher, his “demise” would become common knowledge thanks to “the hungry knowledge of people in a small community”.

However, the judge concluded that immediate imprisonment wasn’t necessary. Davies received an eight-month sentence suspended for 18 months, with a rehabilitation course and 150 hours of unpaid work. He has no previous convictions.

He’ll be on the sex offenders register for 10 years and is subject to a sexual harm prevention order for the same period.