A counter-terror police officer has been found guilty of child sex offences after he arranged to a meet a 13-year-old girl for sex.

Francois Olwage, a detective constable with Metropolitan Police’s specialist operations unit, thought he was chatting online to a teenage girl but it was actually an undercover officer.

He arrested at a McDonald’s in Basingstoke as he was about to buy a McFlurry ice cream to take to his meeting in a park with “Caitlin”.

Two condoms, lubricant, erectile disfunction tablets and a box of Ferrero Rocher were found in his bag.

Olwage, 52, from Stevenage, set up the meeting after a fortnight of explicit conversations online and using WhatsApp.

His trial at Winchester Crown Court heard he was meant to be “on duty working from home” when he arranged the meeting in October 2021.

Olwage claimed he did not believe he was really meeting a teenager and that he thought it was an adult “playing out a fantasy”.

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Before the planned meeting, he wrote in a message: “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.”

Prosecutor Peter Shaw told the court that Olwage had travelled by train to Basingstoke and rented a flat for the evening.

He was convicted of attempted sexual communication with a child, attempting to cause/incite a girl aged 13 to engage in sexual activity, and attempting to meet a girl under the age of 16 following grooming.

The judge ordered the jury to find him not guilty of arranging/facilitating the commission of a child sex offence.

Olwage was remanded in custody until sentencing on 27 April.

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