Paedophile cadet sergeant posed as teen girl online
AN ARMY cadet trainer has been unmasked as a “prolific” paedophile after posing as a 15-year-old girl online to lure dozens of teenage boys into filming explicit videos of themselves.
Jamie Hopes even kept a file named “For Baiting” where he kept photos and graphic videos of a teenage girl to deceive boys into believing he was a young girl.
The 24-year-old – who was also a registered doorman who regularly worked at family festivals – was caught with more than 50,000 indecent videos and images of children.
He was tracked down after police traced a graphic Tumblr video showing children engaging in sexual acts to his IP address.
In June last year South Wales Police officers executed a warrant at the home he shared with his parents in Alfred Street, Maesteg.
When police questioned him Hopes told them: “Yes, I know what you’re talking about – it will be on my mobile.”
Following a search of the address officers seized a number of devices and two of them were found to contain tens of thousands of indecent clips and pictures.
It was also discovered that Hopes, who was a training sergeant with the Army Cadet Force and also regularly worked at family festivals as a registered door supervisor with the Security Industry Authority, also shared a significant amount of the downloaded material with fellow online paedophiles.
Around 40 young victims are thought to have been targeted by his deception and the majority of them he coerced into carrying out sexual acts on film acted in the belief they were sending the content to a girl.
Hopes later pleaded guilty at Cardiff Crown Court to 15 charges including causing or inciting a child to engage in sexual activity, possession of indecent images of a child, distributing indecent images of a child, and possession of extreme pornography. He has now been jailed for four years.
He was also made the subject of a 10-year sexual harm prevention order which will prevent him contacting anyone under the age of 18 and impose stringent supervision by police and partner agencies upon his release from prison. His name will also remain on the sex offenders’ register indefinitely.
Detective Constable Carl Taylor, officer in the case, said: “Hopes was prolific in his downloading and sharing of indecent images and videos of children, many of which were of the most extreme category.
“This in itself is not a victimless crime – real children will have been exploited and will have suffered in order to make that material; abuse which will have a lasting, lifelong impact on them.
“Hopes, however, went a step further in order to satisfy his depraved interests. He targeted dozens of teenage boys on popular social networking sites, gaining their trust by pretending to be a girl their own age and grooming and manipulating them into engaging in sexual acts.
“Our team have not been able to identify all of those affected by Hopes’ offending but, of those we’ve managed to trace, all have suffered greatly and the abuse has had a profound effect on them.
“I welcome this sentencing and I hope it provides those victims with some closure and allows them to begin rebuilding their lives.”