A PAEDOPHILE caught by a national newspaper sting has successfully challenged his potentially life long sentence - and will now only serve two years behind bars.

A PAEDOPHILE caught by a national newspaper sting has successfully challenged his potentially life long sentence - and will now only serve two years behind bars.

Peter Warren, 49, of Rushmere Road, Ipswich, arranged to meet an undercover reporter who had been posing as an underage girl in an internet chatroom in May 2005.

At Middlesex Guildhall Crown Court last July he admitted he tried to groom a young girl for sex and was given an indefinite term of imprisonment.

He was given the sentence for public protection (IPP), which meant he could have no hope of release until he could persuade the parole board he posed no serious public danger.

But judges at London's Court of Appeal have quashed the IPP and replaced it with a conventional four-year jail term. He will be entitled to automatic release after serving half that term.

Judge Ann Goddard QC, sitting with Lady Justice Hallett and Mr Justice David Steel, said Warren did not pose a serious threat of future danger to the public after “facing up to his offence”.

“Warren now accepts responsibility for his behaviour,” said Judge Goddard, who added that the loner had told a probation officer he would have committed suicide if he had actually had sex with a young girl.

Judge Goddard added that Warren had no friends, had suffered from depression and had left his job of 26 years shortly before the offence.

He had become interested in young girls through his use of internet chat rooms, and used the name of B52Pete.

When Warren is released, he will not be able to use the internet without a member of his family being present, and police will be entitled to access computers he has been using at any time.

Judge Goddard also said that Warren will be limited in the contact he can have with children under the age of 16, and the order will last for ten years.

In March 2005, Warren approached who he believed to be a young girl in an internet chatroom, but it was actually a News of the World reporter. She told him she was just 12-years-old, and he asked her to touch herself.

Police swooped on the part-time Argos warehouseman who lived with two brothers at their elderly parents' home when he went to meet a girl he believed to be called Charlotte in an east London park.

When he arrived at the meeting place and began talking to the girl, he was arrested.

On another occasion, Warren sent the same reporter pornographic pictures when she posed as a 13-year-old girl.

Do you think this change in sentence was fair? Write to Your Letters, Evening Star, 30 Lower Brook Street, Ipswich IP4 1AN, or e-mail eveningstarletters@eveningstar.co.uk