Sidmouth administrator of online forum for paedophiles jailed

Nicholas Patrick Craig, from Sidmouth, contacted children as young as 10 years old

A man who set up an online forum for sharing indecent images of children has been jailed.

Nicholas Craig, 38, from Sidmouth, was sentenced to three years in jail at Exeter Crown Court on Thursday.

He was arrested by National Crime Agency investigators after he was identified as a group administrator on the online chat platform Kik.

The court heard how Craig would remove people who failed to supply indecent images of children as per group rules.

After arresting Craig at his home in February 2022, NCA officers said they seized five devices.

Forensic examination found them to contain 1,518 indecent images of children in categories A to C, with A being the most severe.

Further inquiries showed that Craig had used a number of alias accounts in the names of teenage boys and girls to engage children in sexualised chats on Twitter and Telegram.

The youngest person he contacted was aged 10.

Investigators said that when interviewed, Craig admitted to being one of the group administrators and claimed he had collected indecent images of children in order to report it to Kik and Twitter.

The court heard he had made no such reports.

Craig admitted three counts of attempting to engage a child in sexual communication and 16 indecent images of children offences at Exeter Crown Court on 12 May.

'Cover story'

The offences were committed between December 2017 and February 2022.

NCA senior investigator Patricia Lee said: "The account Craig gave about the Kik group he administered simply wasn't plausible.

"His failure to report its contents to police or social media platforms completely undermined his cover story."

Craig was also given a 10-year Sexual Harm Prevention Order, placed on the Sex Offenders Register for life, given a destruction order for the devices seized and ordered to pay a £170 victim surcharge.