MALICIOUS COMMUNICATIONS

A judge had had insufficient regard to totality when imposing consecutive extended sentences totalling 38 years on a prolific sex offender who had pleaded guilty to committing 137 offences over the course of 10 years. A large number of the offences involved the deliberate targeting of vulnerable children on the internet, persuading them to provide him with naked images of themselves and blackmailing them to provide increasingly graphic and humiliating images of them taking part in degrading acts. An extended sentence of 25 years’ custody, with an extension period of eight years, was substituted for the original sentence.