Paedophile jailed after bombarding girls with sexual messages on TikTok

Abuse images on Robert Moors’s phone ‘the worst I’ve ever seen’, detective says

Robert Moors claimed to be 12 years old (Thames Valley Police)

A predator has been jailed after he sent sexual messages to girls as young as eight he met on TikTok.

Robert Moors, 36, repeatedly asked the younger of his two victims what type of underwear she was wearing.

Told they were Frozen-themed, he made a number of requests that the eight-year-old perform what – to an adult – were clearly sexual acts.

Moors, who said he was 12 years old, also “dared” the girl to ask her brother to expose his genitals “for five seconds”.

Their conversation moved from TikTok, where Moors used the 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 social media conversation.

Moors, of The Row, Stanton Harcourt, Oxfordshire, 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 but answered no questions.

Jailing him for four years at Oxford Crown Court on Wednesday, Judge Michael Gledhill QC said: “You opened TikTok, you browsed through the material that was openly on view and you selected two girls who happened to be eight and 1 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.

“Why were you doing it? For your own sexual gratification.”

Gareth James, mitigating, described the case as troubling and acknowledged the custody threshold had been passed. His client had no previous convictions and entered his guilty pleas at the first opportunity, he added.

Moors pleaded guilty to inciting a girl under 13 to engage in sexual activity and possessing indecent images of children.

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

Detective Constable Samantha Bonner, of Thames Valley Police’s Banbury CID, said: “In my 18 years’ service with the police, the content of the messages and videos found on Moors’ devices were the worst I have ever seen.

“The children in this case have been very brave in coming forward and I hope that Moors being brought to justice provides them some form of closure. I would encourage anyone who has been a victim of child sexual abuse to report it to the police.

“I would also like to advise parents and guardians to always be mindful about what their children get up to online, particularly on social media, as there are people out there looking to take advantage of them.

“So always insist on strong privacy settings, parental locks and other measures to keep children safe when using the internet, and educate them about the dangers of chatting to people they do not know.”

Additional reporting by SWNS