A “cruel” and “twisted” paedophile who blackmailed girls as young as 12 into his “sex slaves” has been jailed for 18 years.
Jordan Croft admitted to 65 crimes involving 26 victims who were forced to submit photos and videos of themselves while engaging in acts of a sexual or demeaning nature.
The 26-year-old from Worthing, West Sussex posed as a teenager online while searching for girls with the aim of “dominating and controlling” them, the National Crime Agency (NCA) said.
One victim said she expected Croft to “burn in hell” when he was sentenced at Lewes Crown Court on Friday.
Investigators found that the pedophile was in contact with more than 5,000 people on a single platform.
After convincing victims to send him a nude photo, Croft used this against him to demand increasingly depraved and graphic content.
He established a list of rules that they had to comply with and transferred their conversations to the encrypted platform of Telegram.
Many of the girls and young women he abused, between the ages of 12 and 22, were forced to film themselves saying they were entering into Croft’s “contract of sexual slavery”.
He forced victims to sexually abuse themselves and other children on demand, as well as film themselves urinating and defecating, the NCA said.
Victims had to ask permission to go to the bathroom and say when they would be busy so Croft would know they weren’t ignoring him.
If the girls did not comply, Croft would have meted out punishments and threatened to expose them to family members or social media followers.
In a series of powerful victim impact statements, Croft was branded a “cruel, twisted, pathetic paedophile” who had caused “emotional torment” and “physical and psychological damage” to the girls he abused
“Your atrocious actions have ruined the lives of hundreds, if not thousands, of young girls who will never forget or allow themselves to forget what you did to them,” one victim said, reported Sky.
Another wrote: “I was terrified of you and I thought there was no way out. You trapped me. You scared me. I couldn’t believe that someone could be that violent and nasty,” Sky reported.
Another wrote: “From now on people will know you as nothing more than a cruel, twisted, pathetic paedophile,” reported SKY.
Croft was arrested in September 2019 after being identified as responsible for several usernames linked to online abuse reported to various police forces, with his crime dating back to April 2018.
Croft’s devices were seized, including a thumb drive and two cell phones on which he had stored the abusive material and labeled it with the victims’ names, ages and a list of his social media followers.
The researchers linked him to 20 online profiles on four different messaging platforms.
Chat logs showed that Croft initially pretended to be a teenager to befriend his victims.
Once satisfied that girls would follow his rules, Croft revealed his true age and admitted to being a “catfish” and a “pedo into girls 12-14”.
He told his victims that he has a degree in cybersecurity and that he hid his online identity from him so law enforcement couldn’t track him down.
Croft pleaded guilty to 65 charges at Lewes Crown Court in August, including causing or enticing a child to engage in sexual activity; blackmail; make unjustified requests for indecent images; intentionally causing or inciting the sexual exploitation of a child; and make more than 900 indecent images of children.
The Crown Prosecution Service said Croft was sentenced Friday to 18 years in prison with an extended period of eight years’ leave.
Martin Ludlow, the NCA’s senior investigative officer, called Croft a “prolific offender who has caused heart-breaking suffering to many victims and their families”, reports Sky.
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