'Depraved' paedophile snapped vile selfies while abusing girl - then tried to blame innocent man
29.02.2024 - 08:39
/ manchestereveningnews.co.uk
A 'depraved' paedophile snapped vile selfies while sexually abusing a young girl - then tried to pin the blame on an innocent man.
David Shepherd's campaign of abuse was discovered in 2021, when the National Crime Agency (NCA) was alerted to a number of online identities in chatrooms where users shared child pornography, the Liverpool Echo reports. These identities were linked to Shepherd, who used the chatroom to boast about sexually abusing a child.
Prosecutor Frank Dillon said 'these were not merely lurid fantasies', as Shepherd also shared a number of images of himself abusing the girl. After the sickening pictures were found on his mobile phone, the 43-year-old 'sought to implicate' another man, a court heard.
Join our WhatsApp Top Stories and Breaking News group by clicking this link.
Shepherd was arrested in Birkenhead in August 2021. His mobile phone was seized and a large amount of non-indecent images of the young victim were found, along with eight category A indecent images, three category B and four category C.
Items of the girl's clothing were tested and Shepherd's DNA was found. Mr Dillon said: "Shepherd denied ever abusing (the girl) and denied exchanging indecent images of children.
"He denied participating in conversations about child abuse... and stated he had received notifications on his Gmail account to say that his KIK account had been accessed by a third party. He said he did not know how the images got onto his mobile phone.
"In his defence statement the defendant maintained his previous denials but went further in that he sought to implicate a man as being the likely perpetrator. This resulted in him being interviewed by the police, albeit as a witness rather than as a suspect."
The man
The website popstar.one is an aggregator of news from open sources. The source is indicated at the beginning and at the end of the announcement. You can
send a complaint on the news if you find it unreliable.