A prolific sex offender who abused nearly 50 children after posing as a teenage boy on Snapchat and Instagram has been jailed for 27 years.
David John Andrews, 55, from Northern Ireland, had pleaded guilty to 130 charges of sexual abuse, which involves 47 victims, 46 of whom are children.
His youngest victim was an eight-year-old girl.
Most of the offences relate to so-called catfishing, where a person pretends to be someone else online to deceive others, but some relate to the direct abuse of a vulnerable adult woman.
Police have said it is clear his offending, which involved coercing victims into sending him nude photographs, spread across the UK.
His offences included attempted rape, causing or inciting a child under 13 to engage in sexual activity, sexual communication with a child, blackmail, attempting to pay for sexual services of a child, attempting to arrange or facilitate child prostitution or pornography and making and possessing indecent images of children.
Many of the crimes took place between 2019 and 2020, with Andrews having been on remand for more than four years.
Delivering the sentence at Downpatrick Crown Court, Judge Geoffrey Miller KC said he would not detail Andrews’ offending in full as it was “too harrowing and vile to be repeated”.
He said Andrews had posed as a teenage boy on social media and contacted young girls.
The judge said: “In short form he deceived the children into engaging with him in the mistaken belief he too was a child.
“Having done this he then cynically and with clear pre-meditation, used threats to inveigle and coerce them to share images of themselves with him.
“The correspondence instigated by the defendant with each child victim is extremely graphic in content and gives an insight into his depraved thought processes which are deeply troubling.”
PSNI Detective Chief Inspector Jill Duffie described Andrews, whose address was listed as Maghaberry Prison, as a “heinous child predator”.
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