• 1 year ago
• Posted in:Child Sexual Abuse, Possession of CSA images, Sexual Offences
• 0
• Author: Thomas Gradgrind
• Tags: Aged 20-29, Child victim, Convicted 2023, Cross dresser, Cross-dressing as disguise to commit offence, Derbyshire, England, Female victim, Grooming, Met victim online, Multiple victims, Nottingham, Offended 2022, Reoffended while on licence/bail, Threatened suicide, Transvestite

Anthony Lonsdale (aka ‘Tia’, ‘Emily’, ‘Sam’ and ‘Tony’), a violent male transvestite, was convicted at Nottingham Crown Court in January 2023, of eight counts of grooming and possession of sexually explicit images of children. Lonsdale, 21, was jailed for seven years, plus three years on extended licence. A Sexual Harm Prevention Order and five-year restraining order were also put in place to prevent Lonsdale from contacting his young female victims.

Lonsdale set up a network of fake social media profiles across Snapchat, Instagram and WhatsApp, posing as female and male children that he then used to target young teenage girls to groom and coerce them into sending him nude images. He met one of the girls while cross-dressed/disguised as a girl himself, and then tried to get access to her 12-year old sister. When the victim later blocked him, he contacted her from another fake account and told her she was responsible for him attempting suicide.

Lonsdale also cross-dressed as a teenage girl to meet a 14-year-old girl in a park and then convinced her and her mother to let him stay overnight as he had no money to get home. While on bail, Lonsdale carried on offending – analysis of his phone revealed multiple conversations with teenage girls and nude photos which he would send in coercive attempts to get victims to reciprocate. At the time of his arrest in March 2022 he had been posing as a 14-year-old schoolboy and attempting to enrol at a school that a teenage girl he had been messaging on social media attended.

Detective Sergeant Sophie Draycott of the Child Exploitation Investigation Unit said: “The lengths to which Lonsdale went to by creating several fake personas on social media, to build trust with the victims and even attempting to enrol at the same school as one of the teenagers is unbelievable. Behaviour such as this is intolerable, and I would like to recognise the courage of the young girls who worked with us as part of our investigation. As a result, Lonsdale is now facing the consequences of his actions.”

Photo credit: Derbyshire Police

Media reports

Derbyshire Police statement https://www.derbyshire.police.uk/news/derbyshire/news/news/south/2023/january/man-jailed-for-posing-as-a-teen-girl-and-sending-sexual-images-to-children

Daily Mirror https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/paedophile-21-posed-14-year-29054492 archive

Daily express https://www.derbyshire.police.uk/news/derbyshire/news/news/south/2023/january/man-jailed-for-posing-as-a-teen-girl-and-sending-sexual-images-to-children archive