Crime that shocked the nation

THE depravity of Vanessa George’s crimes shocked the nation.

George admitted 13 sexual assault charges in October 2009, but the depraved classroom assistant maintained a cruel silence over the names of children she sexually assaulted.

She and her accomplices, Colin Blanchard and Angela Allen, became ‘Facebook friends’ before setting up a threeway communication network through which they exchanged thousands of increasingly explicit messages.

They used mobile phones to film and send images of what a senior police officer described as ‘child abuse in its most horrific and devilish form’.

Police believe George came into contact with nearly 200 children while working at Little Ted’s Nursery, although they shortlisted the number of victims abused to up to 30. Their faces were not shown in the images, which made identification impossible.

The 18-stone paedophile used a cubicle to change children’s nappies rather than the general changing area, which allowed her to hide her abuse.

The court heard George regularly showed colleagues, and even parents, hardcore pornographic images of adults on her phone, and openly discussed her sex life.