Harrogate stalker jailed for harassing teenage girl and downloading thousands of indecent images of children

Dylan Ansell’s “extremely disturbing” offences had a profound psychological effect on the young victim who was humiliated online after her tormentor sabotaged her social-media accounts and doctored her pictures in a sexually explicit way, York Crown Court heard.

Ansell, 18, from Harrogate, stalked the girl for over a year and shared the doctored Snapchat and Instagram pictures on social media – even while on bail.

Prosecutor Kelly Clarke said police first swooped on Ansell’s home in the summer of 2021 when he was arrested on suspicion of possessing and distributing indecent images of children.

Analysis of his devices revealed “child-sex-abuse material and chatlogs (about the) rape and sexual abuse of (children)”.

The web chats also included conversations with others about “a number of girls in the Harrogate area”.

In March 2022, the Victim Identification Unit provided details of girls in the Harrogate area whose images, though not indecent, were found on Ansell’s devices.

Ms Clarke said Ansell was using these images as fake social-media profiles to “acquire” indecent and “tribute” images online.

The court heard that ‘tribute’ images were pictures of unsuspecting girls whose images were doctored or overlaid with sexual depictions.

Ansell had “encouraged others to create and share “tribute” posts online.

“He also used the images to pretend to other people online that they were his girlfriend and talked in an obscene manner about them,” added Ms Clarke.

Police identified and contacted the stalking victim who can’t be named for legal reasons.

She said she had been contacted via different online accounts by someone “saying they had indecent images of her”.

Ms Clarke said that Ansell had been “trading images of (the victim) on social media”.

Sexual depictions were superimposed onto a picture taken from her social-media account and sent to people she knew.

In one cruel and harrowing incident, she was contacted on Snapchat by an “unknown user” and given “a list (of) 30 questions, and told that if she didn’t answer them, indecent images of her would be shared”.

They were “personal questions about her bra size and whether she had had sexual intercourse”.

“(The victim) said she thought it was odd that the defendant always messaged her when anything was posted on her (social media) account by her,” added Ms Clarke.

The victim was then contacted via another social-media account urging her to perform a sex act on Ansell “or I won’t stop”.

In February last year, Ansell contacted her again via a new account, pretending to “play the hero” by warning her that someone was trying to use her images.

On April 6 that year, he was arrested again following new evidence and one of his mobile phones was examined.

“This contained further indecent images of children which he had been accessing while on bail,” said Ms Clarke.

Ansell, who refused to answer police questions, was bailed on condition that he didn’t contact the stalking victim, but he took no heed of this.

In April this year, the victim, referred to in court as ‘Girl A’ to protect her identity, called police again to report further online attacks between January and March when several attempts were made to access her Instagram and Snapchat accounts.

She was alerted to the attempted hacks by email notifications which warned her that an “unknown account” had tried to add her as a ‘friend’ on social media.

Ansell was arrested again on suspicion of downloading more indecent images of children while on bail.

He was asked to provide his mobile phone and any other devices but told officers: “I’m using my right to stay silent.”

Police converged on his home again and a sniffer dog found an iPhone and iPad hidden under a pile of duvets, rubbish and a quilt piled up in the corner of a room.

Police found just under 2,000 indecent images of children on these devices.

The warped collection included more than 540 photos and videos rated Category A – the worst kind of such material.

Ansell distributed over 60 of these images to others on the internet.

Most of the children featured in the sordid images were aged between nine and 11, but one involved a child between three and five years’ old.

Ansell, of Bramham Drive, Harrogate, was charged with six counts of making indecent images of children, three counts of distributing indecent images, possessing an extreme pornographic image featuring bestiality, possessing a prohibited or cartoon image of a child and stalking the girl.

He ultimately admitted the offences and appeared for sentence on Friday, July 14.

In a statement made around the time of the offences and read out in court, the stalking victim outlined her nightmarish experience which she found “overwhelming”.

“It is out of my control and I can’t do anything to stop what is happening,” she said.

“My heart sinks every time I receive an email, every time I see someone has accessed my account and accessed my images.”

She had lost trust “with everyone around me” because she didn’t know who was tormenting her.

She now “hated using social media” and told people she knew “not to post images of me or tag me on things”.

“I’ve always been an anxious person, but this has made me so much worse,” she added.

“It’s the not knowing if I’m being followed and what they will do next.

"I don’t understand why I’m being targeted – I’m constantly living with the stress and anxiety this has caused.”

Defence barrister Robert Mochrie said Ansell was a child himself when he committed all the indecent-image offences and only turned 18 in January.

He said Ansell had been “seeking the approval of strangers on the internet which emboldened him and provided him with a sense of inclusion”.

Judge Stephen Ashurst described Ansell’s offences as “extremely disturbing” and a “worrying pattern of behaviour over a number of years”.

He said the doctoring and sharing of the girl’s social-media pictures were “particularly nasty and cruel” offences and that the impact on her had been “nothing short of devastating”.

He told Ansell: “What you did has blighted her teenage years.

"Her self-confidence has been shattered, she has become anxious in social situations (and) concerned about her appearance.”

Ansell was sentenced to 18 months’ detention in a young-offenders’ institution and ordered to sign on the sex-offenders’ register for 10 years.

He was also made subject to a 10-year sexual-harm prevention order to curb his online activities.