A MAN who threatened a girl that he would not continue to play games on social media with her if she did not send him indecent images has been put behind bars.

Michael Hartley groomed the particularly vulnerable young girl into sending him photographs of herself, Liverpool Crown Court heard.

His behaviour came to light after the girl’s dad checked her phone and saw messages on WhatsApp from the defendant.

Previous ones had been deleted but when scrolling through images on her phone he found some of her genitals, said Charlotte Kenny, prosecuting.

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When he spoke to her she said that Hartley, 36, had shown her how to delete the history on her phone and said he had asked her to send him images of her genitals.

Liverpool Crown Court heard that she revealed that he had told her if she did not send the images he would not continue playing games such as Roblox and Bingo with him via Facebook and WhatsApp.

In an impact statement the girl’s dad said that she is particularly vulnerable and Hartley knew that.

“She thinks about it regularly and breaks down, not understanding why it happened to her and thinking she has done something wrong,” he stated.

Hartley, of Winter Grove, Parr, was  jailed for three years after admitting to six charges of inciting a girl under 13 to engage in sexual activity.

Judge Robert Trevor-Jones told him they were serious offences, saying “you groomed her to do what you wanted her to do.”

He imposed a Sexual Harm Prevention Order for ten years and ordered him to sign the Sex Offenders Register for life.

Michael Scholes, defending, said that Hartley, who has no previous convictions, has his own difficulties. “He has been socially isolated and has no real knowledge of the world and quite significant intellectual limitations.”

He said that Hartley accepted he had behaved “extremely badly” and is a “lonely, friendless, deeply unhappy human being.”