Naked pics troll who blackmailed 42 teens for f ive years is jailed
A WEB troll who blackmailed dozens of youngsters into sending him sexually explicit pictures of themselves was jailed for four years and five months yesterday. Social sciences student Andrew McBride, 21, orchestrated a vicious fiveyear campaign on Facebook and Skype which drove some of his 42 victims to the brink of suicide.
The High Court in Glasgow heard he lured teenagers into a vicious circle of exploitation by threatening to expose their compromising pictures unless they sent him more.
Judge Lord Turnbull told McBride, from Prestwick, Ayrshire, his behaviour was both ‘manipulative and cruel’. He added: ‘ Your victims were humiliated to provide you with sexual images of themselves for your sexual gratification.’
The judge said that despite knowing some of his victims were so distressed they were thinking about suicide, McBride carried on exploiting them and had shown little remorse since.
The court was told McBride used four different aliases to prey on 27 females and 15 males, all aged between 13 and 20.
Advocate depute Douglas Fairley, QC, said McBride induced the youngsters to send images of themselves in underwear, naked, or engaging in sexual activity. Mr Fairley said: ‘In the majority of incidents, the accused then threatened the complainers that he would upload the images to Facebook if they did not send him more photos of a similar nature or perform sex acts on a webcam for him.’
His offences came to light after one of his victims told her mother, who contacted the police.
The court was told that, under one of his aliases – David Paterson – McBride became friends with a 14-year- old girl on Facebook. At first friendly, the messages soon became sinister.
He threatened her, saying: ‘If you don’t send me pictures of you naked. I’ll find you and rape you.’
McBride told another 15-year-old victim he had pictures of her in her underwear and if she did not send more he would put the ones he had on Facebook. He told her he knew where she lived.
He threatened a third victim, also 15, in 2012, making her appear topless on a webcam by threatening to attack her family and show explicit pictures of her to them. At one stage she told her tormentor via Skype: ‘You are driving me to want to kill myself...’
McBride also pestered a girl of 13 for a naked photograph, telling her he was ‘randy’ and ‘horny’.
She sent him a picture wearing her bra and another of her in her pants. McBride put one of them on Facebook, naming the girl. He refused to take it offline until she appeared on webcam for him.
On January 2, 2013 he told the girl he had booked a room for them at a hotel where they could meet up for sex. He told her if she agreed he would delete the photographs. She told police she felt like killing herself.
One of his first victims was a boy of 13 who willingly sent a naked picture of himself and performed a sex act on webcam.
The internet abuse of this boy lasted for four years as he continued to pose on the webcam to stop his pictures being posted on Face- book. He became depressed, started to self-harm and once tried to kill himself.
Another teenage boy told police he was caught in a vicious cycle whereby he was compelled to do sexually explicit things on camera so that McBride would not send photographs to his family and friends, but that doing so gave his blackmailer more pictures – and power over him. He said he was coerced into performing via webcam around 50 times.
McBride admitted 38 charges of extortion and also pleaded guilty to charges of fraud and possessing and distributing indecent photographs.
Lord Turnbull said the case highlighted ‘the risk of sexual exploitation of teenage children’. He ordered McBride to be monitored in the community for three years after his release. McBride was also placed on the sex offenders’ register.
‘Humiliated for your gratification’