A fast food worker who distributed child abuse images and chatted online about the “torture, rape and murder” of babies has been jailed for 18 months.
Vile Craig Laurence posed online as a young mother to open conversations with other sex offenders and passed on images and videos of child sexual abuse.
Laurence – posing as Naughty Jill – claimed to be a 23-year-old woman with a four-year-old daughter and he posted a picture of his “daughter” to a chat group on the Kik app.
Dundee Sheriff Court was told that Laurence invited other group users to make sickening sexual comments about what they wanted to do to the child.
‘No alternative’ to prison
Sheriff Alistair Carmichael placed Laurence on the Sex Offenders Register for ten years and told him: “You engaged online with others and discussed the rape, torture and murder of children.
“The charges covered a period from July 2016 to September 2020. The distribution and sharing of images took place in 2020 for a period of a month.
“To express society’s disapproval of such conduct, to give an adequate level of punishment, and to deter other people from offending in similar ways there is no alternative to a custodial sentence.”
Covert operation
Fiscal depute Stewart Duncan told the court that an undercover police officer – posing as a 40-year-old father called Drew – was deployed online to target sex abusers.
Mr Duncan said: “He was pretending to have three children and joined a group on Kik where others were openly sharing child pornography.
“Drew engaged in conversation with a user XJillXXXX who was using the “JillsNaughty” email address. The accused discussed the abuse of babies and said being brutal was a turn-on.”
He said he enjoyed seeing babies crying and being violently sexually abused and he sent videos and still images of young children being horrifically violated.
“He was pretending to be a 23-year-old female, Jill, with a daughter. He would tell people he was from Manchester, Dundee or Forfar, depending who he was speaking to.
“Jill states she has a daughter and posts a photograph of an unknown child. The chat moves on to how open-minded the user is and she appears to entice others to comment on her daughter’s appearance and what they would like to do to her sexually.
“Numerous other chats were also recovered from Kik showing the user engaging in extreme conversations with other people, or within chat groups, where the discussions involve the torture, rape and murder of children, and where child sex abuse material is exchanged.”
Police raid
Police traced the chats to his home in Forfar and carried out a raid, during which they recovered a mobile phone and computer equipment containing illicit material.
Material recovered included boys and girls being abused, and the age range was from new born babies up to 15-year-olds, Mr Duncan told the court.
Laurence, 35, admitted distributing indecent images of children from his home in Goosecroft, Forfar, between 28 August and 2 September 2020.
He also admitted downloading indecent material at his home between 10 July 2016 and 2 September 2020.
