Sexual predator urged teenager to self-harm

HE GAVE HER RAZOR BLADE AND ASKED FOR PHOTOS

- By GRETA SIMPSON

Karl Davies

A PREDATOR with a ‘monstrous sense of sexual entitlement’ has been jailed for 20 years for a string of sexual offences against a vulnerable teenage girl.

Karl Davies travelled from his home to meet his victim in Stockport four times in the summer of 2024, Manchester Crown Court heard yesterday.

The 42-year-old sexually abused her during these meetings and on one occasion encouraged her to self-harm, providing her with a razor blade and asking for photos of the act.

Encouraging someone to self-harm is a relatively new offence introduced in the 2023 Online Safety Act and Davies’ conviction is thought to be the first in the UK where an adult has done so to a child. But he had been in contact with his victim, whose anonymity is protected under law, long before these meetings, using a total of six concocted Snapchat aliases to exploit and manipulate her over the course of a year.

Prosecuting, Hugh Edwards told the court that Davies first made contact with the victim in June 2023 on Snapchat, when she was aged 13, by pretending to be a 16-year-old boy under the alias ‘Ben Wild’

He said: "They began sharing sexual images with each other with images of a teenage boy’s anatomy, procured by the defendant.