One of Britain’s “most prolific” paedophiles pled guilty on Monday to 96 counts of child sexual abuse against 51 boys between the age of four to fourteen.
An investigation carried out by Britain’s equivalent to the FBI, the National Crime Agency (NCA) found evidence that David Nicholas Wilson, 36, of Norfolk, created a series of fake identities online to blackmail at least 5,000 children in the UK and abroad, including in America and Australia.
The paedophile was revealed to have used unregistered phones to send pornographic images of young women to boys on in exchange for them sending him revealing photos and videos of themselves in return.
Wilson would then blackmail the children by threatening to send their photos to their friends in order to force the boys into sending more extreme footage of themselves and in some cases videos of the children abusing their siblings. The torment he inflicted upon his victims was so extreme that some of the boys spoke of wanting to end their lives, a statement from the NCA said.
Appearing before the Ipswich Crown Court on Monday, Wilson pled guilty to charges of blackmail as well as to a slew of online related paedophilia charges. He will be sentenced on January 12th of next year.
The head of Child Sexual Abuse operations for the NCA, Tony Cook said: “David Wilson is a prolific offender who has caused heartbreaking suffering to some of the boys and their families in this case.”
“He knew the anguish victims were suffering but ignored any pleas from them to stop until he got what he wanted from them,” Cook said, adding: “Wilson is an example of adult sexual offenders who use the internet to hide their real identities, using plausible online personas to exploit children.”
“We know children are increasingly sharing personal material on social media sites but I would implore them to think carefully about their interactions online and be aware of the hurt and long-term damage manipulative offenders like Wilson cause,” he warned.
The NCA said that in June and July of 2017, Facebook identified 20 accounts of boys aged between 12 and 15-years-old who had shared explicit images of themselves to a fake account by the convicted paedophile, which appeared to be a 13-year-old girl.
The crime agency said that Facebook’s plans to implement end-to-end encryption on its messenger service would have prevented the paedophile from being caught.
The NCA Director of Threat Leadership, Rob Jones said: “This was a major investigation which has brought a very dangerous offender to justice.
“It’s chilling to think Wilson wouldn’t have been caught if Facebook had already implemented their end-to-end encryption plans which will entirely prevent access to message content.”
“Content obtained from Facebook Messenger conversations was also crucial throughout the operation. Had that content been end-to-end encrypted, there is a real risk that justice would not have been served and Wilson would still be abusing victims today,” Jones concluded.
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