Children’s rapist filmed his evil acts

Paedophile must stay in jail until he is at least 87

A judge has handed a 30-year jail term to a Folkestone pensioner branded as a wicked paedophile who filmed his “grotesque” attacks.

Leslie Girdlestone, a 71-year-old computer expert, had admitted 22 sex offences against five child victims.

A judge at Canterbury Crown Court heard that he used his expertise in computers to hide thousands of images he had also downloaded from the internet’s ‘dark web’.

Now Girdlestone, of Cheriton Road, has been told he will be 87 years old before he can even apply for bail.

Judge Simon James jailed him for 24 years and then added an extra six years on licence if the dangerous sex offender is ever released.

Under sentencing rules, Girdlestone has to serve two-thirds of the main sentence before being eligible for release.

But he will only be released if the Parole Board consider he no longer poses a threat to children.

Police, who raided his home, discovered more than 500 hours of recordings of his sick acts on young children which happened during a campaign of debauchery.

Judge James told him: “You seriously sexually abused and raped your victims, leaving them with serious and permanent effects.

“What makes your offending particularly grotesque was that you filmed many of these acts.”

Deborah Charles, prosecuting, told the court that he had also amassed a disturbing collection “of the worse kind of child pornography” from the internet, depicting degrading acts on very young children.

It was, she added “the most serious of its type.”

John Barker, defending, said Girdlestone, who had been a computer engineer until his retirement, had then become bored and began looking at legal pornography.

“That mushroomed and led to this offending. He has now lost everything. In effect, he has lost the rest of his life because of this substantial custodial sentence.”