A man has been jailed for three years for trying to arrange the sexual abuse of a child while working at the south pole.

Simon Rouen, 36, was arrested at Heathrow last March as he arrived back in the UK, a police spokesman said.

He had expressed his desire to sexually abuse an eight-year-old girl to two undercover police officers while working overseas.

Various emails were exchanged, with the final message sent in March from Chile as Rouen, from Redruth, Cornwall, made his way back to Britain, Kent police said.

He was arrested at the airport by officers from Kent police’s paedophile online investigation team and taken to Maidstone police station to be interviewed.

The spokesman said Rouen had been storing indecent images of children on his computer.

He was charged with arranging the facilitation of a child sex offence and possessing indecent images of children and remanded in custody.

Rouen was found guilty of the charges at Southwark crown court in January and sentenced at the same court on Tuesday.

He will be subject to a sexual offences prevention order and has been made to sign the sex offender register.

According to Rouen’s LinkedIn profile, he worked for the British Antarctic Survey as a laboratory manager from October 2013.

DC Jo Gordon, from Kent police, said: “Throughout the course of the emails he sent, Simon Rouen demonstrated a very real desire to sexually abuse the child when he returned to England.



“Fortunately, through our proactive investigations we were able to identify the risk he posed to children and intercept him before any child could be abused.

“We will use all the techniques available to us to apprehend people who prey upon children online, and who use the internet as a tool to find children to sexually abuse or to view indecent images of children.”