A paedophile jailed for grooming schoolgirls on the internet has launched a Court of Appeal battle to clear his name.
Shaun Martin Pudwell (43), formerly of Napier Road, Gillingham, Kent, was jailed indefinitely in October 2007 after he was convicted of a string of child-sex offences.
During his trial, Leicester Crown Court was told the computer expert approached youngsters via the internet, posing as a schoolboy or an agent looking for child models.
Pudwell, a father of two, was said to have targeted two 12-year-old girls from Newcastle, sending them sexually explicit e-mails.
Around the same time, a 13-year-old Leicestershire girl contacted police after concerns about an e-mail chat she was having with a man.
She saved the material on her grandmother's computer – evidence which helped to convict Pudwell.
However, he claimed he was actually the victim of a stitch-up, perpetrated by someone who had gained access to his computer equipment.
At the trial, he named a prosecution witness as a suspect and now claims he has since discovered the witness had a previous conviction which had not been disclosed.
The alleged conviction was relevant to his defence, he said, because it involved handling 158 stolen computer hard disk drives.
Pudwell, who did not appear in court for the hearing, was listed in court papers as having a new name, Michelle Saunders.
Mr Justice Maddison, sitting at the Court of Appeal in London with Lord Justice Moses and Mrs Justice Nicola Davies, said no such conviction had appeared on police computers, but adjourned the application so the witness could make a statement.
He said: "We would feel uncomfortable about dealing with his case without knowing the outcome of the inquiry to be made.
"This is not intended in any way to give an indication of the outcome of the applications concerned."
Pudwell wants to appeal against convictions for inciting a child to be involved in pornography, attempting to meet a child following sexual grooming, causing a child to watch a sexual act and making indecent images of children.
He also wants to challenge his sentence of indefinite imprisonment for public protection.
This means he will be released only when a parole board is satisfied he no longer poses a serious risk to the public.
No date was set for Pudwell's application to return to court.
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