Pervert, 50, jailed for posing as 17-year-old boy on teenage dating chatroom

Colin Lansdowne, 50, boasted of being banned up to 500 times from teenage dating chatroom MyLOL, known for being prowled by paedophiles, when he spoke with officers posing as a series of 13-year-old girls.

In disturbing conversations - including one with a 12-year-old real girl - he shared images of underage girls, talked of depraved acts and said he would ‘spank’ a child at Alton Towers. He posed as a 17-year-old boy for two years.

When police raided his home in Cherry Close, Lee-on-the-Solent, officers found a hoard of 1,150 abuse images of children including babies, white knee-length socks, girls’ underwear aged 11-12, 13-14 and 15-16 - and a stolen 15-year-old’s girls school diary.

Officers tracked down the bewildered teenager diary owner who said she must have lost her diary on a bus with Lansdowne possibly picking it up and keeping it.

Portsmouth Crown Court heard that after the raid on April 8, 2018, police found Lansdowne had spoken with a real teenage girl.

Prosecutor Matthew Lawson said Lansdowne told one officer ‘age was just a number’ and that he ‘loved younger girls’. He told another he was ‘disappointed’ she would not send naked images of herself to him.

But after being jailed for eight years on Friday, Lansdowne spent his 50th birthday on Monday in prison with no-one but cell mates and jailers for company.

Lansdowne had been ‘offering to send (the real girl) videos of children, which she agreed,’ Mr Lawson said and added she told police she was in a ‘dark place’.

Addressing the pervert, judge Timothy Mousley QC said: ‘To your friend... you described what you did as “ruining your life”. Rather than thinking about your own position you might like to reflect upon the effect on your behaviour (on the 12-year-old girl) and the others.’

Judge Mousley said the defendant tried to ‘cover his tracks’ using lots of profiles, was ‘grooming’ children, had ‘infiltrated’ the website, and there was a large age gap between him and his victims and potential victims.

Ed Hollingsworth, mitigating said: ‘They’re consistent with this defendant deep in a fantasy world rather than trying to go out and make contact with young children.’

He added Lansdowne used the internet to socialise after becoming isolated after his father died.

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The barrister said: ‘All of those circumstances together result in him seeking refuge and reaching out to what was to him a fantasy world. He says that he came into this sort of material and these sorts of activities and it began with curiosity getting the better of him and it developed into an addiction.’

Lansdowne had 1,150 indecent movies and still images of children, five videos and four still images of extreme pornography involving women and a dog, and a single prohibited image.

He admitted 17 charges. They were: two of inciting a child under 13 engage in sex activity, sexual communication with a child, four of attempting to communicate with a child for sexual gratification, and three of attempting to cause a child to watch sexual activity.

He also admitted two of distributing indecent images, three of possessing indecent images, one of possessing extreme pornographic images, and one of possessing a prohibited image.