By Elizabeta Ranxburgaj

Copyright mirror

A “predator” paedophile posed as a 14-year-old boy to target and catfish hundreds of young girls on Snapchat. Unemployed Stuart Latham, 22, raped one youngster, aged 12, and targeted hundreds of others by creating a fake online persona, posing as a teenager named “Josh” online. He preyed on young teen girls, sometimes offering £200 for “nude” images or persuading other victims to send indecent images and videos then threatened to reveal them online if they did not do as he wished, Preston Crown Court heard. Latham has been jailed for 14 years for child sex offences against 39 young girls. The paedophile physically abused two youngsters and committed dozens of offences online against the other 37, the court heard – all aged between 12 and 15, who lived across the UK. The defendant, who made no reaction as he was jailed, watched by two of his victims from the public gallery, horrifically amassed around 4,000 indecent images, many from blackmailing his victims. The 22-year-old pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing to rape, blackmail and multiple counts of engaging in sexual communications, causing or engaging in sexual activity with a child, making and distributing indecent photographs and possessing extreme pornography. All the offences were committed between 2023 and 2024. Jailing him, Judge Philip Parry said: “You are a highly dangerous individual, you are a predatory sexual offender with little to no empathy or remorse. It is no exaggeration to say, you have left emotional wreckage in your wake as a result of the offending you committed against multiple young girls.” He was initially arrested in December 2023 after his first victim told the authorities she was in a sexual relationship with Latham, who she believed was 15. Latham then went on to abuse his first victim’s friend. Both girls were sat in court as the defendant was sentenced. After he was taken from the dock, Judge Parry addressed the two tearful victims, who held hands, sat alongside their families. The judge said: “You are incredibly brave. I don’t know many adults who would be brave enough to do what you did. No child or adult should blame themselves. You should all be proud of yourselves as you move forward. You have all beaten him. He has not won.” Latham treated his activities as a job, spending day after day online at the home he shared with his parents in Wigan, detectives said. Simon France, the detective sergeant in Greater Manchester Police’s online child abuse investigation team, said the 22-year-old was “one of the most dangerous sexual child predators” he’s ever come across. He said: “Whether we’ll see anything like this again, I don’t know. He lived at home with his family, doesn’t appear that he did much in the day, but I know [a colleague] described his offending as a full-time job. “He would sit in his bedroom and target children on a daily basis throughout the day… it’s like it was his full- time job to get these children to do what he wanted.”