November 2013

Man jailed after grooming 13 year old schoolgirl on web for sex

A computer expert who had sex with an underage girl he groomed over the internet has been jailed for 2 years and 8 months.

Matthew Winterbottom, 24 from Wythenshawe, admitted sexual activity with a child, grooming and possessing indecent images of a child. 5575 images depicting child modelling and 913 indecent images were recovered from his computer.

It was during an unconnected investigation into Winterbottom that police received information that he had groomed a girl in Nottingham after befriending her on Facebook. Officers traced the girl who confirmed he’d taken her to a hotel when she was 13 and had sex with her.

Police also discovered Winterbottom, who had recently completed a Computer Forensics degree, contacted numerous other teenage girls through social networking sites. Analysis of his computer showed how he would spend anywhere between six months and two years grooming underage girls. He would search the ‘friends’ lists on his own friends accounts on Facebook, looking for young girls to befriend. Many of those who spoke to him would disengage when he tried to introduced a sexual element.

Winterbottom has been ordered the sign the sex offenders register for life and has been given a Sex Offender Prevention Order.

Detective Sergeant David McCulloch, said: “Winterbottom spent three years at university studying computer forensics and I believe this gave him the confidence to think his actions could not be traced.

“Every stroke of a keyboard leaves an indelible fingerprint in cyberspace and we were able to see exactly what he had been up to. Our computer expert was able to retrieve data from his computer and this supported the intelligence we received.

“The more I looked into what he was doing, the more apparent it became just what lengths he would go to in order to groom young girls.

“In some cases he had been interacting with them for as long as two years. His motive for being online in these forums, which often went into the early hours of the morning, is clear: he tried to meet up with and engage in sexual activity with children. In relation to one victim, unfortunately he succeeded.

“He is without doubt a calculated and predatory paedophile.

“Cases like this reinforce the need for children not to accept people as friends who claim to know their friends and for parents to know who their children are talking to at all times.

“I would also encourage parents to remind your child of the dangers of befriending strangers and together discuss using an app which allows you to know their whereabouts.”