By Tony O’Reilly-
A former South Wales police officer, Lewis Edwards, 23, has been found guilty of grooming and blackmailing 210 girls between the ages of 10 and 16 through Snapchat.
Over the course of three years, Edwards posed as a 14-year-old boy, secretly recorded indecent videos and images, and compelled his victims to create explicit content.
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Edwards, who joined the force in January 2021, had previously pleaded guilty to 162 child sex offenses. However, he refused to attend his sentencing hearing at Cardiff Crown Court, which began on Monday, causing the proceedings to proceed in his absence.
During the hearing, it was revealed that Edwards engaged with the 210 girls between November 2020 and February 2023, with investigators recovering images related to 207 victims.
The court heard that Edwards used these explicit images to blackmail the girls into sending increasingly graphic and explicit content. In some cases, he threatened to share the victims’ images with their friends and relatives to further manipulate them.
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The charges against Edwards include inciting a child to engage in sexual activity, making a child watch a sex act, demanding indecent images of children, and making indecent images of children. The sentencing hearing is expected to last three days.
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