16 years in prison for Facebook pervert who incited child rape
A PREDATORY paedophile who never met his victims set up 40 fake Facebook profiles to snare them, a court heard yesterday.
Paul Leighton, 32, posed as a teenage girl online to groom hundreds of youngsters into abusing themselves and each other while he filmed them.
He was jailed for 16 years yesterday as a serial child rapist – despite never meeting most of his victims. In the first case of its kind, Newcastle Crown Court accepted he ‘directed’ the abuse and so was guilty of raping children, some of whom were in different countries thousands of miles away.
He demanded compromising photos of his victims, then threatened to show them to their parents – after he identified their mothers and fathers in their list of Facebook friends. He blackmailed them to force them into more horrific acts.
He was on bail when he committed his worst crimes, including inciting a 14-year-old boy to rape his own niece. He was arrested after a single mother he met on a dating site accused him of abusing her nine-yearold daughter in 2015. It was 22 months before he was charged.
Leighton, of Seaham, County Durham, admitted 19 offences including three rapes, two sexual assaults on girls under 13 and four counts of grooming.
As well as jail, he will serve six years on licence, and is subject to a Sexual Harm Prevention Order barring communication with children or going online without supervision. Facebook declined to comment last night.