A serial child predator who identifies as transgender has been caught for the second time engaging in sexual communications with a child. Gemma Anne Hicks, 35, interacted in a sexually aggressive manner with a Facebook user he believed was a 12 year-old girl.
On December 13, Hicks was handcuffed and arrested outside of his residence in Wales following a sting by volunteer predator hunters. Children’s Innocence Matters (CIM), had established a decoy Facebook profile presenting as a 12 year-old girl.
Hicks initiated contact with the profile, and quickly launched into sexual discussions. He invited the girl to join him at a swimming pool, asked about her bra size, asked to see her underpants, and proclaimed to have an interest in entering female-only changing facilities to watch girls undress.
Hicks also allegedly confessed to being a pedophile in one message that read, “I’ll be honest, I’m sexually attracted to little girls.”
CIM confronted the predator at the location he had established to meet the child, and recorded the interaction for transparency and their own protection. While waiting for police to arrive, the group read his disturbing messages. Throughout, Hicks was standing casually, sometimes crossing his arms, rolling his eyes, and using a nicotine vape. He repeatedly said “I don’t care.”
Hicks also insisted multiple times he was a woman, and that he was being “assaulted” while being held awaiting police under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, which allows for non-police arrests. He accused the volunteers of “misgendering” him, and warned that by doing so, they had committed a crime against him.
“There you go again, misgendering. That’s classed as a hate crime,” Hicks asserted on several occasions.
The team member leading the sting asked Hicks to imagine what he might do if he had a relative who was underage and being targeted by a predator online. But Hicks shrugged off the scenario apathetically, saying: “I was taught to look out for number one.”
When confronted on being a reoffender and previously being handed a suspended sentence, Hicks said: “Yeah, I admit, I made a mistake. I had a mental breakdown, so what?” Hicks also bragged about his suspended sentence being over, and insisted he was not the one who had sent the messages to the child despite the communications coming from his Facebook profile.
When police arrived, a female officer told Hicks he was under arrest for sexual communication with a child under 16 years of age.
This was not Hicks’ first time engaging inappropriately with a minor. During the sting, predator hunters claimed this was his third time being nabbed for similar conduct, but news of only one other arrest and conviction under his “feminine” name is available.
In January 2021, Hicks, who was living in England at the time, received an 18-month sentence, suspended for two years, at Caernarfon Crown Court after attempting to engage in sexual communication with a child. In the United Kingdom, a suspended sentence allows a criminal to walk free and avoid prison completely so long as they maintain certain conditions of release.
At the time, Hicks’ defense lawyer argued that Hicks was a “damaged individual,” and that being taken into custody would not be conducive to his efforts to rehabilitate. Although the judge described the offense as “extremely disturbing and troubling” and acknowledged the court had the authority to issue a custodial sentence, she focused on the prospect of rehabilitation and declined to incarcerate him.
Hicks was handed a Sexual Harm Prevention Order (SHPO) to last for 10 years, and police ordered his phone and SIM card to be destroyed.
Coverage of Hicks’ conviction was limited, and those outlets which did report on the case referred to Hicks as only a “woman” and used feminine pronouns for him, leading readers to believe a female had been caught in a predator sting.
On Facebook, the predator hunters who caught Hicks advised people to avoid “transphobic comments.”
It is unclear at this time when Hicks will be tried in court or how the court will handle the reoffender. The predator hunters have asserted they did not believe his suspended sentence was yet at a close despite what Hicks attempted to claim, but regardless of the status of the 2021 sentence, Hicks was still under an active Sexual Harm Prevention Order.
If Hicks is incarcerated, he may be sent to a women’s prison, with the decision likely contingent on whether he has a legal document known as a Gender Recognition Certificate.
Hicks is the third known trans-identified male caught by predator hunters in the United Kingdom since August of this year.
At the end of November, a self-proclaimed “sissy” was caught in a predator sting after sending graphic sexual messages and pornography to a decoy social media account he believed to belong to a young girl.
Shaun Hawkes, 30, of Kent, England, was arrested at his mother’s home on November 27 following a sting conducted by the Justice for Innocence Project (JIP). A JIP representative told Reduxx that Hawkes’ communications with he decoy was “one of the worst we have dealt with,” and included references to raping an animal.
In August, Jonathan Lea, 44, who also uses the name Emma Bella-Puttana, was caught in a sting by predator hunters after sending child sexual exploitation materials to a decoy account set up to appear to be a minor. During the operation, Lea reportedly also boasted of raping a 6 year-old.
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