Castle Donington Paedophile Jailed After Offering ’14-Year-Old’ £300 for Sex

A repeat sex offender from Castle Donington has been jailed for nearly five years after targeting what he believed was a 14-year-old girl online — offering her £300 for sex and sending explicit material, before being exposed as a predator by a paedophile hunter. Zacharie Hall, 31, of Bishop Road, Castle Donington, was sentenced at Leicester Crown Court on 2 April after pleading guilty to three counts of inciting a girl under 16 to engage in sexual activity.

Castle Donington Man Jailed After Paedophile Hunter Sting

The “girl” Hall had been grooming — using the name Tilly — was in reality a paedophile hunter posing as a child. Over 18 days in January 2025, Hall bombarded the decoy with sexual messages almost from the moment she accepted his Facebook friend request, responding to her first with “thanks for adding me, beautiful” before the exchanges turned explicitly sexual within minutes.

Prosecutor James Varley told Leicester Crown Court that Hall discussed “taking her virginity,” talked about having alcohol and drugs with her, and at one point offered to pay for a taxi so she could sneak out of her parents’ home. He also offered her £300 to visit him for sex, sent her an unsolicited explicit photograph, and urged her to perform sexual acts on herself. In one message he told her: “Don’t bring any clothes — you won’t be needing them.”

This is not Hall’s first time before the courts for this kind of offending. In 2013, when he was just 18, he received 16 weeks’ youth custody for a sexual offence against a girl under 16. He was, in other words, given a second chance — and he used it to target another child. Readers following repeat offenders passing through Leicestershire’s courts will find the pattern here deeply uncomfortable.

Hall’s solicitor, James Bide-Thomas, told the court his client suffers from a range of mental health conditions including anxiety, depression, schizophrenia, and emotionally unstable personality disorder, as well as various physical health problems. The court also heard Hall had a later conviction for dealing cannabis.

The Sentence — and Why the Judge Was Troubled

Sentencing Hall, Judge Philip Head said: “You made it clear your intention was to have sexual intercourse with her. You offered her £300 to meet. You told her to come to your house and talked about videoing the two of you having sex together.”

Crucially, the judge noted that after pleading guilty, Hall had been interviewed by the Probation Service — and his attitude in that interview gave serious cause for concern. The pre-sentence report indicated Hall was “minimising” his offending, and Judge Head said his “attitude was really concerning.” That finding matters enormously: it suggests Hall has not fully accepted the gravity of what he did or the risk he poses.

Hall received a sentence of four years and eight months, plus an extended licence period of a further four years and four months — meaning he will remain under close supervision and at risk of recall to prison for more than nine years in total after sentencing. He will serve the first two thirds of his custodial term in prison; after that he can only be released if the Parole Board is satisfied he no longer poses a risk. He is also subject to an indefinite Sexual Harm Prevention Order and must sign the sex offenders register for life.

The Predator Next Door — What This Case Really Tells Us

Castle Donington is a village best known nationally as the home of Donington Park race circuit and the Download Festival. It is a place where families live, where children grow up, and where — like everywhere else in England — adults with access to a smartphone can reach into the bedrooms of teenagers without ever leaving their own home.

That is the uncomfortable reality this case forces us to confront. Hall was not some shadowy stranger lurking outside a school. He was a local man, living at a residential address in Bishop Road, opening a Facebook account and sending a friend request. The grooming started within seconds of a connection being made. He knew — or believed he knew — he was talking to a 14-year-old girl. He discussed sex with her immediately. He offered her money. He sent explicit images. All of this happened on a device that most children in this country carry in their pocket.

The use of a paedophile hunter in this case raises questions that are worth examining honestly. These groups — operating as private citizens rather than police — occupy a contested legal and ethical space. Their evidence has been used to secure convictions in hundreds of UK cases, and this prosecution is one more to add to that list. Without the decoy account, it is entirely possible Hall would have targeted a real child. He had already served time for a sexual offence against a girl under 16. He had a previous conviction. And yet, 12 years on from that first sentence, he was on social media, messaging someone he believed to be a 14-year-old girl, within minutes of connecting with her.

The mental health mitigation presented by his solicitor deserves acknowledgment. Schizophrenia, emotionally unstable personality disorder, anxiety, and depression are serious conditions, and they are not simply invented for courtroom purposes. But — and this is a significant but — the Probation Service’s own pre-sentence report found that Hall was minimising his offending. He was not presenting as a man who had confronted what he had done. He was presenting as a man making excuses. Judge Head flagged this explicitly. That is not a minor detail. That is the finding that shapes how seriously we should take any claim that mental health treatment will resolve the risk Hall poses.

Leicestershire County Council’s own data makes clear that online exploitation remains the single biggest concern in child sexual exploitation cases across the county. In their most recent exploitation figures, CSE referrals in the county showed online offending as the dominant threat — and the largest cohort of victims falling in precisely the age bracket Hall was targeting: 14 to 15-year-olds. This is not a problem on the margins. It is the central child protection challenge facing Leicestershire right now.

The extended licence period and the indefinite Sexual Harm Prevention Order are both meaningful steps. They mean Hall will not simply disappear back into the community unmonitored. But sentences, supervision orders, and register requirements can only do so much. They are reactive measures — imposed after the harm has been attempted or done. The question of how we prevent men like Hall from reaching for their phone in the first place is one nobody has fully answered, and it is not one that courts can solve on their own.

For parents in Castle Donington, and across Leicestershire, this case is a reminder of something that probably doesn’t need repeating but does anyway: the people sending these messages are not always strangers from distant cities. Sometimes they are local men with local addresses, already known to police, already convicted of similar offences, and still finding their way into a child’s inbox. That is the reality. We should say it plainly, and say it loudly.

We will be following this case and others like it — because this community deserves to know who is being brought before its courts and what the outcomes are.

Have Your Say

Do you think the sentence handed to Zacharie Hall is sufficient for a repeat sex offender who deliberately targeted a child? And what more do you think should be done to protect young people from online predators in Leicestershire? Let us know in the comments below — your views help shape the conversation in this community. For more crime and court news from across Leicestershire, stay with yourlocalsource.co.uk.