Lumley ratings hit
JOANNA Lumley’s debut hosting the film Baftas notched up more than four million viewers – up on last year. Sunday night’s British Academy Film Awards peaked at 4.6 million and averaged four million on BBC1. 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.
University lecturer Dr Matthew Falder 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.
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.
Sentencing “warped and sadistic” Falder, 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: “Your behaviour was cunning, persistent, manipulative and cruel.”
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.
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.
Falder, of Harborne Park Road, Birmingham, forced one victim to film herself licking toilet seats, a used tampon and eating dog food, and set up secret cameras in bathrooms to record women and girls naked, before trading the images online.
Falder’s long-term girlfriend is said to be “standing by” him, according to his barrister, and the judge said his parents would support him “on release” – though he would not be eligible for parole until he was 50.