Leeds pervert ran paedophile chat sessions and made sickening rape comment
He initially claimed his accounts had been “hacked”
A “lonely” paedophile who organised group chats online about abusing children has been spared prison.
Vile pervert Nicholas Moulding was caught with dozens of illegal images and videos, then claimed somebody must have planted them on his devices.
However, it was found he was an administrator on social media groups with like-minded people, Leeds Crown Court heard.
The 41-year-old Post Office worker eventually admitted three counts of making indecent images.
The court heard that the National Crime Agency alerted police to Moulding’s accounts in November 2023, suggesting he had been uploading images to Twitter / X.
He was arrested from his home address in December 2024 and a mobile phone and laptop were seized.
They found dozens of images and videos of children being abused, including some regarded as Category A - the worst kind depicting the rape of youngsters.
The children in the videos were as young as nine, prosecutor Jessica Lister told the court.
But it was also fund that he had been instigating conversations online between October 2023 and November 2024.
He made comments about teenage girls, calling them “fresh meat”, encouraged child incest and even chillingly said that “rape was a stimulant” to him.
Moulding had exchanged images with others, but they were not found to be illegal images.
However, other photos that he sent could not be recovered, so more serious charges of distributing indecent images could not be considered.
Interviewed, he gave a prepared statement to police claiming his devices had been hacked.
A trial date was set, but last month he finally admitted his crimes.
Moulding, of Potterton Lane, Barwick-in-Elmet, has no previous convictions.
Mitigating, Philip Mahoney said due to his social isolation, Moulding “fell into a world of almost make believe”.
He said there had been no offending since.
Judge Mushtaq Khokhar described it as a “horrific type of crime” and added: “You are someone who is a loner, you are socially isolated and maybe this was your way of getting into something and having social interaction.”
He gave him an 18-month community order with 200 hours of unpaid work to complete.
Moulding was also put on the sex offenders register for five years, and given a five-year sexual harm prevention order (SHPO) to help curb his internet use.