Basingstoke ObserverA counter-terrorism officer with the Metropolitan Police was caught trying to meet a 13-year-old girl for sex by an undercover operation, a court has heard.
Det Con Francois Olwage, who was serving with the Met’s specialist operations unit, is accused of grooming what he believed to be a 13-year-old girl he had met on an online chat forum.
Mr Olwage, 52, from Stevenage, Hertfordshire, allegedly spoke to the “girl” for two weeks before trying to meet, Winchester Crown Court heard.
The girl was in fact an undercover police officer.
The court heard Mr Olwage had started explicit sexual conversations with the “girl” in October 2021 before suggesting they meet in what she said was her hometown of Basingstoke.
Prosecutor Peter Shaw said Mr Olwage had travelled by train to meet the girl, who went by the username Smile Bear, in a park after stopping at a McDonald’s restaurant.
He said the defendant was arrested in the fast food restaurant by two undercover police officers.
When officers searched his bag they found condoms, a bottle of lubricant and a packet of erectile dysfunction tablets, the jury heard.
He also had a box of chocolates which Mr Shaw suggested was a present for the girl he thought he was meeting.
Mr Shaw said that Olwage did not answer questions when interviewed by police but gave a statement saying that “he never believed that Smile Bear was a 13-year-old girl”.
He continued: “Instead he believed it was an adult female living out a fantasy as a 13-year-old.
He found the fantasy that that person was purporting to run was of intellectual interest to him and therefore he went along with it, he played along never believing the other person to be a 13-year-old girl.” He added that the defendant “denied having a sexual interest in children and denied the meeting would involve sexual activity.”
Mr Shaw also said that Olwage had sent a message ahead of the meeting to the ‘girl’ stating: “Because of your age, things can go very wrong for us, I could be breaking the law, lose my job, social services be called. I do not want any of that for us so we can’t meet tomorrow for anything sexual so it can only be about us meeting to chat and spending time together.”
Giving evidence to the trial, the undercover officer who posed as Smile Bear, who can only be identified as Max, said he had stated the girl was aged 13 and the defendant had replied: “Are you OK chatting with me, I could be your dad?”
Mr Olwage denies engaging in sexual communication with a child and attempting to cause or incite a girl aged 13 to engage in sexual activity, arranging or facilitating the commission of a child sex offence and meeting a girl under the age of 16 following grooming.
The trial continues.
