ready to settle out of court

Dismore’s trial made for particularly upsetting listening - he was a student who rarely left his computer screen, but who spent hours online, grooming and then threatening school girls.

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He was jailed in January for trying to murder one of his victims, after chasing her down a Middlesbrough street and stabbing her.

Judge Stead also cites the case of Andrew Hadwin and Cheryl Pickles as one of the worst he has presided over. Hadwin took his own life in HMP Durham in 2023, before he was sentenced, but the trial heard the most harrowing evidence about the Durham couple's sadistic abuse of a number of children some of whom were made to watch them eat takeaways as they starved.

It sticks in the judge’s mind as a “particularly appalling case.” Pickles is now serving a 15-year term for child cruelty.