Paedophile, 36, sent sexual messages to girls as young as eight on TikTok

A paedophile who sent sexual messages to girls as young as eight on TikTok has been jailed.

Robert Moors, 36, pretended he was 12 years old when he made contact with his victims via the popular social media app.

Moors repeatedly asked the younger of his two victims what type of underwear she was wearing and made a number of requests that the eight-year-old perform what – to an adult – were clearly sexual acts.

He also “dared” the girl to ask her brother to expose his genitals “for five seconds”.

Their conversation moved from TikTok, where Moors used James Bond-themed username ‘Goldeneye0073’, to WhatsApp.

A second victim, who was 10 when she was contacted on TikTok by Moors, was asked what she was wearing. He suggested she remove her underwear.

The messages were discovered when the second girl approached her father “shaking and crying” and showed him the conversation.

Moors was arrested two days later, on 21 December last year, and his mobile phone was seized.

When it was searched by police experts, the phone was found to contain 95 child sex abuse videos in the worst category, which includes depictions of child rape.

There were 75 videos in category B and 65 in category C. The children in the videos were aged between six and 11.

He was interviewed twice and answered no comment to all questions asked.

Jailing him for four years at Oxford Crown Court, judge Michael Gledhill QC told Moors that he was sending the messages to the girls “for your own sexual gratification”.

He added: “You opened TikTok, you browsed through the material that was openly on view and you selected two girls who happened to be eight and 10-years-old.

''You spoke to them directly and you asked them to do sexual things, albeit not the most serious sexual things but we are talking about girls under 10.”

Gareth James, mitigating, said Moors had no previous convictions and entered his guilty pleas at the first opportunity.

Moors, of Stanton Harcourt, Oxfordshire, pleaded guilty to inciting a girl under-13 to engage in sexual activity and possession of indecent images of children.

He will be on the sex offenders register for life and was made subject to a seven-year sexual harm prevention order designed to limit his unfettered access to children and the internet.