Paedophile gang member jailed after leaving mobile phone in car at repair garage

A mechanic unlocked the phone while trying to trace the owner and it began playing a video of a child being sexually abused.

The garage owner contacted the police and they tracked down David Wilson, 36, before uncovering hundreds of vile videos and stills on his two mobile phones.

Wilson, formerly from Hartlepool, had swapped videos with other perverts and he had lured two girls aged 14 and 15 into sending him obscene photographs of themselves in exchange for some of himself.

Prosecutor Christopher Baker said that the discovery on 6 September last year showed that Wilson’s phones had 197 child sex abuse videos at the most serious category A level lasting three hours 39 minutes, 118 at category B lasting one hour 36 minutes and 43 at category C lasting 33 minutes recorded between March 2020 and August last year

Wilson had also exchanged videos from A, B and C Categories in December 2020 with someone called “Ironman” and with other people in December and August last year, Teesside Crown Court was told

He also chatted to a girl in the south of England who claimed to be a 14 and he encouraged her to send him naked photos of herself and performing a sex act.

In return he sent her photos of his private parts.

He was also in contact with another girl who described herself as a 15 year-old from Scotland.

Paul Green, defending, said :”He is ashamed of himself and he pleaded guilty at the earliest opportunity.

”He wants to put his life back onto the right track.”

The Recorder of Middlesbrough, Judge Paul Watson, said that he would treat Wilson as a man of previous good character because he had no relevant earlier convictions.

Wilson, now of Essexport Road, Stockton, was jailed for five years and eight months and given a Sexual Harm Prevention Order.

He was ordered to register as a sex offender for life after he pleaded guilty to nine offences of making and distributing indecent images of children and attempting to communicate with a child for sexual purposes.

His phones will be destroyed.