The court heard how Jones would contact the victims and gain their trust before asking them to send explicit photos and videos of themselves.<\/p>\n
When some of the children refused further requests, he blackmailed them into sending more sexually explicit images, saying he would publish previously sent images on social media.<\/p>\n
He also sent sexual photos and videos of himself to the children.<\/p>\n
After his arrest, police found 172 indecent images of children on his phone.<\/p>\n
The court heard Jones contacted his victims on the messaging platform Snapchat, sometimes using an alias and lying about his age, and would ask them for nude photographs and videos.<\/p>\n
James Wilson, prosecuting, told the court the victims felt “sick”, “betrayed” and “creeped out” when Jones demanded explicit images.<\/p>\n
One victim, aged 12 at the time of the offences, said in a statement: “When this first happened to me, it made me feel very nervous and upset.<\/p>\n
“I was worried that people would find out what I had done and treat me differently.<\/p>\n
“Since telling the police, I’ve had some counselling… I blame myself for everything, really.<\/p>\n
“I still find it very hard to talk about.”<\/p>\n
Another victim said: “I trusted him and I thought he was my friend.<\/p>\n
“He has made me feel stupid for believing everything he said to me.”<\/p>\n
John Ryan, defending, urged the judge to consider Jones’s lack of maturity and his age at the time of the offending, which took place between 2022 and 2024, adding that he felt genuine remorse.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The court heard how Jones would contact the victims and gain their trust before asking them to send…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":508776,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[12,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-508775","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uk","8":"category-united-kingdom","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115393804689420008","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508775","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=508775"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508775\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/508776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=508775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=508775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=508775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}