The officer went online posing as a teenage girl - Kelsey - aged 14, from Warrington. Within 20 minutes he had 50 replies from men. Many made no attempt to camouflage their intent. Tag names when they replied to 'Kelsey' included 'Northern Perv' and 'English well-hung'.
It proved the point that the officer's boss, Detective Chief Inspector Gavin Day, who oversees the Online Child Abuse Investigation Team (OCAIT) for Cheshire Constabulary, had set out to prove. That there is a pandemic of online sex crimes - and more resources were urgently required.
"I wanted to give senior officers an understanding of 'this is what we are dealing with and why you need to invest'. It was not a difficult sell, I told them it was huge, horrific, and affecting people's lives - they absolutely got it," said DCI Day.
