Pervert who contacted NI children jailed for 32 years
ONE of Britain’s most prolific paedophiles, who blackmailed a string of vulnerable victims including a girl who was ordered to eat dog food, has been jailed for 32 years.
Among those contacted by university lecturer Dr Matthew Falder were children in Northern Ireland.
He admitted 137 offences, including voyeurism, encouraging child rape, and sharing images showing the abuse of a newborn baby, after being caught by an international inquiry led by the National Crime Agency (NCA).
The 29-year-old Cambridge graduate was arrested in June last year after four traumatised victims, who were tricked into sending him humiliating images, threatened or attempted to end their own lives.
Tracking Falder down was made difficult as he used around 70 online identities to contact around 200 people across the country from Cornwall to northeast Scotland and Mid Wales to Northern Ireland, as well as in the US and Canada, and was careful not to leave tracks on the open web.
A spokesperson for NSPCC Northern Ireland said: “Falder is a despicable predator who targeted vulnerable victims and encouraged the most appalling abuse of young children. Behind every child abuse image or video is a victim who has endured unimaginable pain and suffering — as this disturbing case demonstrates.
“Abusers like Falder often use blackmail and threats to make victims feel they have nowhere to turn. But we would urge anyone in this situation to contact police or the NSPCC Helpline 0808 800 5000, where trained counsellors are available 24/7.”
Online abuse: Dr Matthew Falder
Sentencing “warped and sadistic” Falder for “a tale of ever-increasing depravity”, Judge Philip Parker QC said: “As for your equally extraordinary sexual offending — no one who knew you, above ground, had an inkling of what you were doing below the surface.”
Branding him an “internet highwayman” who targeted 46 victims, he added: “You wanted to assume total control over your victims. Your behaviour was cunning, persistent, manipulative and cruel.”
For the victims, he said: “The damage is ongoing. For these individuals it will never end, knowing the abuse caused by you still exists in other unknown persons’ computers.”
The judge, who also gave Falder a six-year extended licence period, added: “These sentencing remarks underplay your relentless, obsessive desire to continue committing offences.”
The University of Cambridge, which said it had been “appalled” at the crimes, is now looking at stripping disgraced Falder of his academic qualifications, in a “rare” move for the 809-year-old institution.
A previous hearing was told that Falder coerced male and female victims into producing “increasingly severe self-generated indecent images of themselves, the focus of these images being to humiliate and degrade”.
Falder duped victims, who were advertising for babysitting or dog-walking jobs on online message boards, into providing nude images by posing as a female artist who wanted to turn them into life drawings.
He forced one victim to film herself licking toilet seats, a used tampon and eating dog food, and set up secret cameras in bathrooms — including his parents’ Cheshire home — to record women and girls naked, before trading the images online.
Another was blackmailed into eating his own faeces and drinking urine, while the 29-yearold also encouraged the rape of a boy, aged two, by his own father.
The unprecedented operation to catch Falder, who used specialist software to hide his online accounts, was aided by GCHQ, the United States Homeland Security Department and law enforcement bodies in Israel and Australia.
Falder, of Harborne Park Road, Birmingham, committed his offences over nearly 10 years, manipulating victims “behind a computer screen” by duping them into providing nude images and personal details.
On his arrest, the former post-doctoral researcher and lecturer in geophysics at the University of Birmingham quipped with officers that the list of then suspected offences sounded “like the rap sheet from hell”.
Meanwhile, Falder’s long-term girlfriend is said to be “standing by” him, according to his barrister — though he would not be eligible for parole until he was aged 50.