A “perverse” self-professed paedophile who blackmailed girls into providing him with explicit images has been sentenced to 26 years in jail.
Jordan Croft admitted 65 offences against 26 girls and women, ranging from 12 to 22 years old. He also made some of the young women take intimate photos of seven-year-olds known to them.
Croft, 26, forced his victims to perform sex acts on themselves and other children, and blackmailed them into becoming his “sex slaves”.
The paedophile forced some of the girls to film themselves, agreeing to a contract with him, with victims declaring: “My body is property of Jordan’s throughout this contract. I will perform all activities he requires.”
In one message to a victim, uncovered by the National Crime Agency, Croft wrote: “I’m a 22 yo pedo, into girls 12-14.”
He boasted that he had “completely covered my digitial [sic] tracks and I cannot be traced by law enforcement”.
Croft would pose as a teenage boy online and befriend his victims. He would bully them into sending him one intimate picture of themselves and then use this to blackmail them into other horrific acts.
He spammed a huge number of female users online, messaging over 5,000 people on just one application. The National Crime Agency discovered 906 encrypted images of children on just one of Croft’s phones.
Victims had their every move monitored by Croft. They had to ask permission to use the toilet – and were even told to put a note in their underwear as a reminder. Croft would create lists of victims’ family and friends, and threaten to send the girls’ pictures to everyone they knew.
Sentencing Croft at Lewes Crown Court, Ms Justice Laing said he “engaged in a lengthy, premeditated campaign of sadistic and manipulative abuse of many young girls”, adding: “You did everything you could to control them, making them agree to bizarre contracts where they had to agree to your every whim.
“Many of your victims were aged between 12 and 15, an age when any right-thinking person knows them to be vulnerable, something that you were only too happy to exploit. You were invading the privacy of their homes and their bedrooms.”
Ms Justice Laing said the female victims had been left feeling as if “they have no safe space any more”.
During the campaign of abuse “you left many of them feeling completely isolated from family and friends”, she said.
“The majority of them felt that they had no option but to submit to your depraved demands.”
Ms Justice Laing added: “I believe you are extremely dangerous, a serial paedophile”.
Jailing Croft, she acknowledged that she had to reduce the maximum sentence because he had pleaded guilty to the offences.
The 65 charges included multiple counts of causing or inciting a child to engage in sexual activity, blackmail, making unwarranted demands for indecent images of children, intentionally causing or inciting the sexual exploitation of a child, and making over 900 sexual abuse images.
