December 2013
Cambridge man jailed for six years after grooming girls as young as nine on the internet
A man who groomed girls as young as nine via webcam has been jailed for six years.
Andrew Spring, of St Vincent’s Close, Girton, was sentenced at Cambridge Crown Court after pleading guilty to 11 counts of causing children under the age of 16 to engage in sexual activity.
The 38-year-old admitted grooming girls between the age of nine and 15 on internet chatrooms – asking them to perform sexual acts on webcam and then trying to get them to meet him in hotel rooms to have sex.
The court heard how police started investigating Spring in 2011 after receiving a tip-off by a member of the public.
Miss Blair, prosecuting, explained: “In October 2011 police visited Spring at his home in relation to information given to them. They had no warrant and he voluntarily allowed police to remove his Dell computer.
“It was examined but not for some time. A number of indecent images and movies were then found.”
Spring then attended a police interview in March of this year.
Miss Blair said it was clear the defendant had created a number of movies himself, as he can be seen performing a sexual act on himself in a split screen in the footage.
This meant the children he was filming would have been able to see him at the same time.
The movies were created using a webcam and an application described as “similar to Skype”, between March 2010 and October 2011.
Further images on his computer dated back to June 2007.
Miss Blair told the court how Spring had “continued contact with one of the children” after starting talking to her on a chatroom when she was 14.
He went on to visit her three times in person, with the most recent time being in March of this year – two weeks before he was interviewed by police.
Miss Blair described this behaviour as “evidence of grooming activity”.
She said: “Spring asked girls to take photos of themselves and suggested meeting at hotels to have sex.”
Before sentencing Miss Blair asked Judge Gareth Hawkesworth to consider the age of the girls involved, the persistent nature of the offending and the length of time over which the offences were taking place.
Melanie Benn, mitigating for Spring, said: “He admitted searching for child porn. He admitted that all of the images and movies discovered were down to him.
“He said at the time he was lonely and getting drunk. He said it did not matter how old they were he just wanted to talk to somebody.”
Miss Benn said Spring realised he had to stop shortly before police visited his address, after a particular incident involving two young girls aged around nine.
Judge Hawkesworth sentenced Spring to six years in prison and ordered him to be added to the sex offenders’ register for an indefinite period.
