A father asked supposed schoolgirls to make "sucking and moaning sounds" while watching videos of him "playing with himself".

Neil Pickup, 40, has been jailed for 12 months after he was found talking to two girls who he believed to be 12 and 13.

Robert Wyn Jones, prosecuting, told Preston Crown Court that both ‘Emily’ and ‘Elle’ were actually decoy accounts made by so-called paedophile hunting groups.

Pickup, of Parsonage Road, Wilpshire,  met ‘Emily’ on a website on January 4 with the pair quickly exchanging numbers and starting to talk on WhatsApp.

‘Emily’, which was a decoy account set up by a woman from a vigilante group, told Pickup a number of times that she was 13 years old but he engaged in sexual communication with her, asking her if she knew what role play or sexting was.

Mr Wyn Jones said: “He asked her to send pictures of herself in her school uniform.

“She sent a picture of her head but he said he wanted to see her in a skirt.

“He asked her to watch him playing with himself and make sucking and moaning noises.”

On January 27, Pickup sent another video asking the supposed girl to watch him again and make the noises.

In total, Pickup sent four videos of a man with an exposed penis which forensics found were of him having been filmed in his living room.

The profile of ‘Elle’, set up by another paedophile hunter, told Pickup that she was 12 years old and that she was in year 7 at school.

Despite this, Pickup continued to talk to her, again asking for her to make the "sucking and moaning noises", whether she knew what role play was and whether he wanted to "watch him play with himself".

He asked ‘Elle’ if she could go on video chat but she said she couldn’t in case her "mum and brother heard".

The two people reported Pickup’s crimes and he was arrested in his home.

Defending, Neil Howard said that Pickup had no similar previous convictions and that this offending had already had a huge impact on his life, specifically for his wife of four years and their twin sons.

Mr Howard said that Pickup understood what he did was wrong and that his offending was in response to struggles with his mental health following a "vicious attack".

He said that this took him to a "very dark place in his life" and that he went on a "path of self-destruction",

Mr Howard told the court: “He is disgusted and ashamed of himself. Clearly, he has issues with his motivation for these offences.

“He accepts the urgent need to address the motivation of his sexual offences.”

Judge Ian Unsworth KC jailed Pickup for 12 months and said he will be subject to sexual offence notification requirements and a sexual harm prevention order for 10 years.

Judge Unsworth said: “You took deliberate steps to communicate with two people who you thought were school girls – one aged 12 and one aged 16.

“This was a deliberate targeting of school girls for your own sexual gratification while they said they were in the early parts of high school. These are serious matters.”

Pickup previously pleaded guilty to two counts of attempting to engage in sexual conversation with a child and two counts of making a child look at images of sexual activity.