‘Police officer blackmailed more than 200 girls online’ | UK News

A police officer groomed 210 girls online, inciting them to share explicit images and perform sex acts for him.

Lewis Edwards, 23, blackmailed several of the girls, saying he’d share the content with friends and family if they refused his demands.

The former South Wales Police officer targeted girls aged between 10 and 16 on Snapchat over three years.

Edwards, who was suspended from the force when caught and later resigned, refused to attend his sentencing hearing at Cardiff Crown Court, which is due to last three days. It has continued in his absence.

Edwards, often posing as a 14-year-old boy, would tell them to perform increasingly graphic sexual acts and secretly record the girls, and also ask them to share explicit images.

He also sent videos to the girls of himself performing a sex act, the court heard.

Edwards, who joined the force in January 2021, had previously pleaded guilty to 162 child sex offences.

Roger Griffiths, prosecuting, said detectives raided the home he shared with his parents in Bridgend, South Wales, in February this year and seized mobile phones, a computer, USB sticks and a hard drive.

The material revealed the online interactions Edwards had with the girls, including his requests for the girls to engage in various sexual activities and the subsequent blackmailing.

‘He would say he was going to post images he already had to friends and relatives of the victims,’ Mr Griffiths told the court.

Edwards, of Heol Ty Cribwr, Cefn Glas, Bridgend, was in contact with 210 girls between November 2020 and February 2023 and officers recovered images relating to 207 victims.

The court was shown some of the videos Edwards had recorded of his victims.

In one, a teenage girl can be seen crying and wiping tears from her eyes as Edwards messages asking her to take off her clothes.

In a victim impact statement, the girl described Edwards as a ‘paedophile’ and added: ‘I was a little girl. I feel embarrassed, disgusted and abused. I lost my innocence.

‘I know the police are there to help us but how can I call the police now if I am in danger? I would not be able to trust the people who are there to keep us safe.’

Another victim was ‘guilt-tripped’ into sending Edwards graphic images after he threatened to hurt himself, Mr Griffiths said.

‘She felt like it was all her fault and she let her parents down and failed as a daughter, as a friend and as a student,” he added.

‘She feels guilty. She stated during this whole time she would be crying every night and she opened up to her best friend and told her everything that was going on.’

In a victim impact statement, the girl said she had also lost trust in the police.

‘If something went wrong in the future, I wouldn’t trust the police to deal with it right,’ she said.

‘The police are supposed to look after us and they didn’t look after me.’

The 162 offences Edwards previously pleaded guilty to include inciting a child to engage in sexual activity, making a child watch a sex act, demanding indecent images of children, and making indecent images of children.

The hearing continues.

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