'Sexual predator' Wayne Baker lured girls on internet

Jail for 'sex-obsesssed' predator

A two-and-a-half year police investigation into Wayne Baker began in June 2007 when a mother contacted social services after finding inappropriate photographs of her teenage daughter.

Detectives were led to Baker, who has been sentenced to 11 years for 22 sexual offences including child prostitution, but they would have had little idea in those early days of the extent of his activities.

Baker ran two businesses, Wayne Baker Developments and WB Properties, but also had a modelling agency and an escort agency.

The escort agency was a front for prostitution and his home was known as the "brothel on the top of the hill".

However, the community had no idea that some of the prostitutes were under-age girls.

It's disgusting really how he could have done it... he had a massive impact on so many young girls' lives Victim of Wayne Baker's

The investigation developed into a hugely complex operation involving detectives taking hundreds of statements and filming dozens of witnesses.

Officers took months to view more than 100,000 images and DVDs containing sexual abuse, while trying to piece together evidence and identify victims.

In all, half a million images and DVDs or films were seized, although not all were sexually inappropriate.

Women officers also had to gain the trust of the victims to get as many of them as possible to recount their experiences.

Police agreed Baker was a "sexual predator" targeting vulnerable youngsters

Police said 61-year-old Baker, a retired steelworker of Ebbw Vale, Blaenau Gwent, would target vulnerable youngsters - sometimes using internet chat rooms - and start by complimenting them or giving them special attention.

One victim, who was about 15 when she became involved with him through a chat room, was in care at the time.

"It's disgusting really how he could have done it. He had a massive impact on so many young girls' lives," she told BBC Wales.

"I was very vulnerable, I was in care. I didn't really have a stable home as such.

"When you've got someone telling you 'I can give you this, I will look after you'... when you haven't got a steady home life, if someone is offering you the world, you're going to take it."

Another victim, who met Baker through a chat room at the age of 14, said he came across initially as a "nice guy".

"He was somebody I could talk to because he would listen to anything I had to say," she said.

"We spoke for about three months when he asked me to meet him and I agreed."

She ended up working as a child prostitute and described her life over the next five years as "terrifying".

"I was convinced I loved him. It was just the way I thought life was so I didn't feel any regret doing those five years," she told the BBC.

"That was the way I saw life as. From the age of 14 - which obviously was the first time for me to experience that - for five years, that was what I was used to, that's what happened."

The use of the internet, the use of the modern technology was key in Baker's way in which he identified and then groomed vulnerable individuals into the sex industry Det Ch Insp Bill Davies

Baker, who is divorced, also came into contact with girls through his modelling business. He might suggest taking provocative photographs and, for the relatively lucky ones, that was it.

Others were sexually and physically abused, and ended up becoming child prostitutes.

Baker was said to have humiliated his victims and also gave some of the girls drugs to either calm or subdue them.

'Very real risk'

Senior investigating officer Det Ch Insp Bill Davies praised the victims who gave evidence and also praised officers during what he said was a "complex and painstaking" task involving "horrendous" images.

He said the case had also highlighted the dangers technology could pose in the hands of a sexual predator.

"The use of the internet, the use of the modern technology was key in Baker's way in which he identified and then groomed vulnerable individuals into the sex industry," he said.

"I think he was a man who had no boundaries and I genuinely believe he was extremely manipulative and very clever in the way in which he would often give confusing messages to some of the young victims that met him, in terms of control, but also at times being very plausible and actually pleasant to those individuals."

He agreed that Baker was a sexual predator and added: "Wayne Baker represents a very real risk to young female children."

Last month, he pleaded guilty to 22 sex offences involving girls aged between 14 and 19.