Man, 51, jailed for 24 years after ‘repeatedly targeting children’

A 51-year-old man has been sentenced to 24 years in prison for child abuse offences which a judge described as being unlike any case the court had seen before.

Andrew Thorne, of Bristol, was convicted after pleading guilty to 18 offences, including sexual communications with a child, taking and making indecent photographs of a child and causing a child to engage in sexual activities.

On Friday 25 October, Bristol Crown Court heard how Thorne had first come to the attention of the police after concerns were raised about his online use, where he had been accessing child sexual abuse material.

He was arrested by Avon and Somerset’s Internet Child Abuse Team (ICAT) on 10 August last year on suspicion of making indecent images of children.

Following his arrest and subsequent interviews, a number of electronic devices were seized and examined. Through this examination, the scale of Thorne’s offending was uncovered.

Using an alias, Thorne had used online platforms to message children, where he directed children aged between six and 16 to engage in sexual activities on camera – officers discovered there were 182 individual victims.

Officers also discovered Thorne had downloaded hundreds of images, some showing the sexual abuse of children as young as 18 months old.

He also recorded himself following and upskirting women and children in public, with more than 200 instances between August 2022 and August 2023, taken all over the UK and Europe.

Thorne was sentenced to 24 years in prison, serving a minimum of 18 years before being eligible for parole.

If he passes the parole board, he will serve the remainder of his sentence on licence and there is a lifetime Sexual Harm Prevention Order in place.

During sentencing, the presiding Judge said the court ‘had not seen a case like this’ and the ‘sheer number of victims was more than the court had ever seen’.

Officer in the case, Investigating Officer Lucy Hartill, said: “Thorne is a very dangerous individual who has repeatedly targeted children, the most vulnerable in society, both online and offline.

“He has directed children to engage in harmful sexual behaviour which will undoubtedly have a profound effect on them for the rest of their lives, all for his own selfish desires.

“This has been a difficult and complex investigation, but the sentence demonstrates how seriously we take these matters and our enduring work to bring offenders such as this to justice.”