Craig Baillie encouraged an Ashford girl to perform a sex act on webcam

by Paul Hooper

An Ashford teenager was seduced online by a 25-year-old man who lured her to spend nights together.

Craig Baillie spent "at least" eight nights in bed and breakfast hotels with the schoolgirl he had groomed for sex over the internet using a false name.

Now the fiend – who was trapped because he forgot to erase his conversations with the girl - has been jailed for five years and four months.

Baillie, of Harrow, Middlesex, admitted 20 sex offences including downloading disgusting child images and a specimen charge of sexual activity with a child.

Canterbury Crown Court heard he had persuaded the girl to run away to meet him in London – with her parents believing she was staying with friends.

Baillie, who told the hotel owners the girl was 21, is now regarded as posing a "high risk" of committing more sex offences unless he was jailed.

The judge, Recorder Bobbie Cheema QC told him: "The number of occasions this happened can't be identified but it was certainly more than eight occasions.

"The Metropolitan Police were alerted to your presence on a file-sharing website on which illegal images of children were present."

Officers then raided his home and took away a laptop and a hard drive.

"That hard drive had saved – probably without your knowledge – chatlogs you had with a child in which in which you encouraged her to perform a sex act on camera. I have read them and it is clear that you were leading that child on," she added.

The girl – who was tracked down by detectives – had told the devious pervert she had to wait until her parents were asleep before carrying out other sex acts.

The judge said: "It is quite clear you and the child were speaking in sexually explicit terms, but you were the prime mover in this. You claimed you thought at first she was older than she was but by the time you went away with her you were well aware of her true age.

"She regarded herself as your girlfriend and I have seen an impact statement from her and make no mistake just how badly damaged that young woman now is. She has lost her trust and finds it difficult to get on with her life."

Among the child sex images seized on Baillie's computer included some at the most disgusting level five – including 20-minute rape movies "showing children in distress", the court was told.

The judge added: "It is hard for ordinary people to understand how a young man could become interested in images of children being abused and in distress."