ARMY veteran Carl Mould has been jailed for two years and eight months for paying a Filipino woman to strip a four-year-old girl in front of web cam.

The former forces paramedic paid 1,000 Philippines pesos, about £30, to the woman, but she ended their Skype conversation before undressing the youngster after she received payment through a Western Union money transfer.

Durham Crown Court heard Mould, 52, of Hurworth Close, Trimdon Station, County Durham, was also found in possession of hundreds of indecent images of children, ranging from six months.

Judge Christopher Prince, Recorder of Durham, said the most serious aspect of the case was the use of technology in an attempt to persuade a woman to involve a child in an online sex chat.

He said: “What this defendant has done is exploit the mother of a four-year-old to place her on a camera in the Philippines and expose her body.

“This is international exploitation, making use of Skype and webcam. It seems to me to be very serious offending.”

Mould is a former serviceman, who served in Northern Ireland, the Falkands, Bosnia, Kosovo, Sierra Leone and Iraq during a 24 year career.

He suffers from post traumatic stress disorder and alcoholism as a result of the horrors he witnessed while serving with the Army.

Mould earlier pleaded guilty to five charges over possession of indecent images of children, plus another count relating to extreme pornography, as well as one of arranging or commissioning an act of child sexual touching.

Mitigating, Andrew Petterson said: “In this case there was a potential victim but no harm was caused by that child briefly appearing on a webcam.

“The defendant was effectively exploited by the woman on the other end of the webcam.”

Mould was told he will serve at least half his sentence in prison and the rest on licence.

He will sign the sex offenders’ registers for the rest of his life and is the subject of an indefinite sexual harm prevention order.