Between 2015 and 2018, Hampshire Constabulary’s Internet Child Abuse Team (ICAT) received information from a number of agencies – including the FBI in America – in relation to email addresses and online usernames being used by an offender to speak to young girls over an online chat site and on social media platforms.
The user, identified by police as 35-year-old Joshua Pelling of Avenue Road in Sandown, had been inciting the children to engage in sexual acts and blackmailed them into sending him further images of themselves committing these acts.
Pelling would threaten the children by telling them he would share their pictures with their close friends or family if they did not provide him with more images at his request.
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