A soldier who planned to travel from his central London barracks to Wales to sexually abuse two young children has been jailed for 12 years after he was caught in an undercover police operation.
Graham Jarvis, 38, believed he was communicating online with a mother willing to allow him to sexually abuse her children.
In reality, the person he was speaking to was an undercover police officer.
Jarvis, who was living at military barracks in Hyde Park, began the conversations in January 2024 and believed the woman had two daughters, aged seven years and just 10 months.
The court heard Jarvis discussed sexually abusing the children and began arranging to travel to the woman’s home the following month.
He was arrested in February 2024 before any meeting could take place. The children he believed he was arranging to abuse were not real.
Jarvis denied two counts of attempting to arrange the commission of a child sex offence but was convicted following a trial. He was subsequently dismissed from the Army.
Judge: ‘This was not a case of fantasy’
Sentencing Jarvis at Southwark Crown Court on Thursday, Judge Adam Hiddleston rejected the suggestion that his conversations amounted merely to fantasy.
He told him: “This was not a case of fantasy on your part.”
The judge said he had no doubt Jarvis believed the children were real, adding: “You wanted to meet them and when you did, with the assistance of their mother, you intended to rape them.”
Judge Hiddleston said he had read Jarvis’s messages “with horror”, describing his treatment of the supposed children as “cold and clinical” and saying he was prepared to treat them as objects for his own sexual gratification.
At least eight years behind bars
Jarvis was sentenced to 12 years in prison and ordered to serve at least two-thirds of the custodial term — eight years — before becoming eligible for release.
The court also imposed an additional two-year licence period, reflecting concerns that Jarvis could continue to present a risk to children.
