POLICE are to teach youngsters in East Lancashire schools about the dangers of the internet in a bid to stop them falling into the clutches of perverts cruising chatrooms.

The pioneering link-up between detectives and teachers has come about following the conviction of Lancashire pervert Charles Trevor Monaghan, 37, on a variety of offences he committed on under-aged girls after promising he could get them modelling contracts.

Monaghan, of Fulwood, Preston, is awaiting sentence on two counts of unlawful sex, four of indecent assault and four of gross indecency.

The unlawful sex offences and two each of the gross indecency and indecent assault charges relate to an incident at the Stirk House Hotel in Gisburn, where Monaghan lured his victims after meeting them on the internet. The victims of the remaining crimes were from Blackburn, and had travelled to the former accountant's home after being told he would turn them into models.

At Burnley Crown Court yesterday, sentencing for those offences was adjourned after he pleaded guilty to three new charges of producing indecent images of girls under the age of 16.

Detective Inspector Neil Hunter, from Lancashire Police's Public Protection Unit, said: "We are working with the University of Central Lancashire to draw up the final details and will pilot it in East Lancashire schools.

"We will go in and work with teachers showing pupils how to be safe on the internet and help protect them from people like Monaghan.

"There are people who trawl the internet posing as things they are not and tragically they will travel a long way if they think they have tricked someone.

"We want to make sure that this sort of thing does not happen again."

The university has a team dedicated to helping make the internet a safer place. Both Blackburn with Darwen Council and Lancashire County Council are working on the project.

Monaghan had made contact with the girls via the internet, pretending he was from a modelling agency. He called himself Michelle and said he ran an agency called T and N Models. The firm, he said, tested beauty products.

He took four girls from Blackburn to his Preston home where he committed acts of gross indecency on two of them and indecently assaulted them.

Two other 14-year-old schoolgirls, from the Ribble Valley, were collected from school and taken to Stirk House Hotel when he had unprotected sex with one of them, in addition to committing acts of gross indecency and indecently assaulting them.

Monaghan, who is married with two children, was told by Judge Raymond Bennett at yesterday's hearing that he now faced a lengthy custodial sentence.