The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Depraved teen who preyed on underage girls sent to detention
Indecent images were passed on to sex offenders after children were blackmailed
A twisted teenager who blackmailed children and traded indecent images and video of his victims with a UK-wide network of paedophiles has been sent to detention for three-and-a-half years.
A sheriff told him his twisted desires, extortion, threats and “sexual depravity” had wrought untold damage upon the lives of girls as young as 12.
Glen Allan Wilson frightened the underage girls into sending him explicit content and then used the images as a “finder’s fee” to sex offenders willing to help him identify new victims.
He threatened them with exposure and ridicule if they stopped and continued to pressure one girl even after she told him he had pushed her to the brink of suicide.
Wilson, 19, used a string of aliases and hid behind a huge number of profiles as he targeted girls aged between 12 and 15 across Britain.
Behind the fake identities was a straight-A Dundee High School pupil who was studying at St Andrews University when his offences came to light.
He initially faced 49 charges and pleaded guilty to 23, all carried out between September 10, 2015 and June 14, 2016 and relating to eight girls.
Wilson, of Longforgan, admitted sending sexually explicit messages to girls and also admitted inducing them to send indecent images of themselves and engaged in sexual activity by means of social media.
The teen also coerced and extorted them into recording images and videos with the intention of menacing them and putting them in a state of fear and alarm, and threatened to send indecent images to family and friends and publish them on social media unless they provided him with further images.
He also admitted making, being in possession of and distributing images and video of children being sexually abused.
Though he was convicted of preying upon eight girls, investigators found he had sent the same blackmail message 450 times.
It was enough to frighten most of his victims into sending further videos until they eventually called his bluff, called the police or Childline, or their parents intervened.
On an occasion when one of the girls stood up to him, he issued her with a countdown to her images being made public.
He had also offered links to a Dropbox account filled with indecent images and video to paedophiles across the UK for details of “further potential victims”.
Sheriff Gillian Wade said: “The nature of the messages you sent, including those in which you said ‘I don’t want to ruin your lives but I will’, was despicable.
“Every one of the 23 charges to which you have pled guilty would justify a custodial sentence on its own.
“You are incredibly lucky that The Crown chose to bring this case to the Sheriff Court and not the High Court, where the penalty could have been even more serious.
In addition to sentencing Wilson to three years and six months in detention, Sheriff Wade ordered that he be subject to an 18-month extended sentence following his release to ensure continued supervision.
He will be on the sex offenders register for life.