An Australian paedophile jailed after an international police operation preyed on eight children from the UK.
Brett Allford, 42, from Edwardstown in Adelaide, contacted 10 children over Snapchat and Instagram including eight from Redditch in Worcestershire.
Allford, described in Australian media as a former cricket and football club umpire, enticed his victims to send revealing photos and videos.
He was jailed on Monday for 23 years after pleading guilty to to 14 online child abuse offences.
Australian police began investigating Allford in 2022 after receiving a report from West Mercia Police of a teenager engaging online with a man suspected to be in South Australia.
Officers raided his home in October that year and seized a phone which contained sexually explicit communications with 10 victims, aged 11 to 16, from the UK and Canada.
There were “numerous files containing child abuse images”, West Mercia Police said.
Allford had manipulated the victims and taken advantage of their personal circumstances “to satisfy his deviant sexual desires”, the force added.
He enticed victims to send photos and videos by offering money to spend on clothes or food.
In passing sentence, Judge Paul Muscat at the South Australian District Court, said some of the Redditch victims had been known to each other and because his victims had lived overseas, detection had been more difficult.
He said the case “illustrates the ease with which children can be sexually abused or exploited by predators communicating with them online”.
The judge described his actions as “sinister” and said he had taken advantage of children who “were plainly at a vulnerable age, easily influenced and emotionally immature”.
Youth football teams and grassroots clubs across the country have held a minute’s silence at the start of their games to commemorate a 10-year-old girl who di
10-year-old Poppy Atkinson was killed when she was struck by a car during a training session at Kendal Rugby Club in Cumbria. Clubs from Leeds to London
The high court, sitting in Liverpool, heard Uefa had relied upon the principle that English courts will not inquire into the legality of actions by foreign gove
Caption: Alan Shearer?s Premier League predictions credit: Getty / Metro After some impressive results for English sides in Europe the focus is