Webcam user jailed for inciting US woman to abuse child

Wilde had pornography of children as young as 18 months old

A 19-year-old man from the West Midlands has been jailed for four years and eight months for inciting a mother in the US to abuse her own child.

Nicholas Wilde, of Holmbridge Grove, Walsall, was arrested on 11 June 2009 after an investigation by West Midlands Police and US officers in Maine.

Wilde admitted making and distributing indecent images and inciting sexual assault on a child under 13.

Wolverhampton Crown Court heard he used a webcam to direct and watch the abuse.

Most serious pornography

Wilde was caught when he sent images of sexual abuse to a 16-year-old girl who he was chatting to on the internet.

The girl reported it to her mother who called police.

A memory stick seized at Wilde's home contained footage of a woman in Maine abusing her young child at Wilde's direction.

It also contained a collection of photographs at the most serious end of the child pornography scale involving children as young as 18 months old, the court heard.

Sentencing him, Judge Hilary Watson said of the exchange with the American woman: "It was entirely for your benefit, at your direction, for the sexual gratification of Nicholas Wilde."

Wilde, who has Asperger's syndrome, was ordered to sign the sex offenders register. He will serve his sentence at a young offenders institution.

He was banned from working with children for life.