'Fully-fledged' child sex abuser jailed
Durham PoliceA "fully-fledged" sex offender who intimidated children online into performing sexual acts has been jailed for six and a half years.
Andrew Weir pressured a 14-year-old boy and 13-year-old girl to send naked pictures of themselves and watch him perform sex acts, Teesside Crown Court.
The 30-year-old from Darlington also amassed a "nauseating" collection of videos of children being sexually abused over a five-year period, the court heard.
He admitted attempting to engage the boy in sexual activity but was found guilty of inciting the girl to perform sexual acts, having claimed he did not know she was 13.
Weir was 22 when he made contact with a boy in Thailand on Skype between May and August 2016, prosecutor Paul Newcombe said.
The conversation quickly turned sexual with Weir, who posed as a 15-year-old boy, seeking images of the youth and threatening to "hack" the child's phone if he did not comply, the court heard.
Between 2016 and 2021, Weir also downloaded dozens of indecent pictures and videos of children, including several in the most serious category featuring 13-year-old girls, the court heard.
In May 2022, he made friends with a 13-year-old girl online and again started to pressure her for pictures of herself, Mr Newcombe said.
She eventually gave into his "persistent and increasingly intimidating" demands, the court heard, but he was arrested shortly after the girl's parents discovered the messages.
In mitigation, Tony Davis said Weir, of Brignall Moor Crescent, lived an "isolated" life that revolved around making relationships online.
Judge Advocate Thomas Mitchell said by 2022 Weir was a "fully-fledged sex offender with a sexual interest in children" who had "done real harm".
As well as making contact with children, he gathered a "collection of nauseating indecent images" of children, the judge added.
But, he said, a spell in prison with the monitoring and support of professionals would "likely change [Weir] for the better".
The judge said "good [could] be done" with Weir but warned him any future similar behaviour would see his sentence being measured in decades.
Weir was also made subject of a sexual harm prevention order restricting his use of internet-enabled devices and banning him from contacting children online indefinitely.