Too young for jail, teen troll who hounded girls into sending nude photos
A TEENAGE internet troll who bullied young girls into sending him nude selfies has avoided jail because he was a child too.
Daniel Crowley, now 18, was branded ‘a parents’ nightmare’ by a judge after he used a string of fake identities to trick five girls aged 12-15 into sharing indecent images, which he then used to threaten them with.
The mother of one victim told the apprentice mechanic: ‘You have stolen the daughter I had, slowly and systematically. She has shut down from all she enjoyed and she has also been self- harming because of the torment you put her through.’
But Judge Sylvia de Bertodano said she had to sentence Crowley as a child because he was 16 and 17 at the time, and she imposed a three-year community order.
‘If you were an adult, you would be looking at a sentence approaching double figures,’ she told him. Warwick Crown Court heard how Crowley contacted girls from all around the UK using fake identities on social media.
Prosecutor Daniel Wright said: ‘He asked them to send images of themselves committing sexual acts, and kept them and used them to coerce the girls to send further images. He used various identities, sometimes encouraging them to contact other people who were also, in fact, him.
‘That enabled him to exercise control in a bullying manner.’
Police were first alerted by a college where one girl is a pupil. She told officers how Crowley had demanded she send him pictures of her in underwear. When she did so he ordered her to send more or he would kill himself. He also sent images of a naked woman to her friends, claiming it was her.
Another victim sent him 50 pictures of herself and he then used other fake accounts to taunt her, making her believe the naked images had been circulated. When another girl sent images of her bare breasts he threatened to show them to others if she did not send more.
Mr Wright said that when police seized Crowley’s phone they found downloaded indecent images on it, including some involving toddlers.
Delroy Henry, defending, said: ‘What he did was cruel, really cruel. It is a sad testament of the technological age we now live in that it was done with such ease.’
Crowley, of Wellesbourne, Warwickshire, admitted five charges of causing a child to engage in sexual activity and three of making indecent images of children. As well as serving a community order, he will be on the sex offenders’ register for five years.
Judge de Bertodano said the offences were ‘really serious’. She told Crowley that his young victims had been ‘desperately frightened’.
‘You cruelly abused them over a year-long period,’ she added.
‘This is the nightmare that parents of teenagers face, that their children can be exposed to this type of behaviour online – and that when we believe they are safe in their bedrooms, they are being subjected to sexual manipulation like this.
‘But I have to treat you as a child. I have to consider what the benefit of sending you to prison today would be, and I don’t think anyone would be protected in the long term if I were to do that.’