A BIDFORD-On-Avon man who was the administrator of an online group which exchanged child pornography and tried to persuade a 15-year-old girl to have sex with him, has been jailed.

Perverted David Chapman also took his own covert pictures of Stratford schoolgirls in their uniforms to help fuel fantasies of sexually abusing and raping children.

A judge at Warwick Crown rejected a suggestion that he could be given a community order after he had pleaded guilty to attempting to incite a child to engage in sexual activity.

The 33-year-old, of Greenacres Caravan Park, Waterloo Road, Bidford-on-Avon, who also admitted three charges of making indecent images of children and three of distributing them, was jailed for four-and-a-half years.

Grace Ong, prosecuting, said that in March 2018 the police carried out a search of Chapman’s caravan home and seized seven devices including two phones and two hard drives.

On them they found a total of 4,427 indecent images of children, including some involving babies.

Among them were 1,136 in category A, showing children, some of them very young, being subjected to penetrative sex acts.

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There were 281 category B images of children involved in non-penetrative sexual activity, and 2,310 category C images of youngster in naked or indecent poses.

The police also found 1,680 pages of messages on social media messaging sites where Chapman was the administrator of sites he had set up with other people to receive and distribute indecent images of children.

He admitted he had set them up to share images and to chat about the abuse of children.

Using the sites, on which there were 4,209 separate chat logs, he had distributed 105 category A images, 61 category B images and 184 category C images to other members of the groups.

He also attempted to persuade a 15-year-old girl called Anna to take part in various sex acts with him.

Chapman told the teenager, who lived in the United States, that he would pay to have sex with her, a 15-year-old friend and her 13-year-old sister.

“He asked if he could spank them and whether they would perform lesbian acts while he had sex with them, and he said he would travel to the US to have sex with them,” said Miss Ong.

Worryingly, officers also found 67 images Chapman had taken himself of schoolgirls who, from their uniforms, could be identified as pupils of a Stratford school.

They were not indecent themselves, but there were also text files about the sexual abuse and rape of children.

When he was first interviewed Chapman made no comment, but in a later interview he admitted doing what he had done for sexual gratification, saying he was sorry and needed help.

Nick Devine, defending, said Chapman, who had no previous convictions, suffers from Tourette syndrome.

“This makes social interaction difficult for Mr Chapman.

"He has never had a girlfriend and never had a relationship of any sort whatsoever, which does provide something of a link to his offending behaviour.”

Mr Devine, who said there was never any chance of his attempt to meet the girl becoming a reality, suggested that any risk he poses could be addressed by a three-year community order.

But jailing Chapman and ordering him to register as a sex offender for life, Judge Barry Berlin told him: “There were 4,427 images, many of them of the most appalling and sickening types.

“You were not only downloading them, but distributing them in the paedophile community.

“Officers also found several exchanges of chat between you and persons saying they were under 16, not decoys but real people you knew and believed were under the age of 16.

“There were three chat logs in which you fantasised of raping schoolchildren and some, admittedly non-indecent, images of children from a Stratford school.

“There were thousands of vile indecent images of children - and you were the administrator of a group which distributed and shared those images. Immediate imprisonment there has to be.”