A MAN who used “an element of blackmail” and threatened a 13-year-old girl with gang-rape so she would send him more intimate pictures of herself has been jailed for two years and four months.

Jordan Knight, of Seaham, had already successfully persuaded the girl to send him five naked pictures of herself.

But when he asked her for more images, in online social media chats and over the phone, she refused.

Durham Crown Court heard he screenshot the images and sent them back, threatening that he would post them on social media and send them to her friends and family unless she walked to a local shop topless.

He then warned her that he and friends would gang rape her if she did not follow his instruction. Knight also said they would sell her for prostitution, and then threatened to self-harm if she went to police.

Jane Waugh, prosecuting, said the girl did go to the police and Knight was arrested and interviewed, accepting he had received the images from the girl and made sexualised comments.

Miss Waugh said he was also asked about online exchanges with another 13-year-old in which he had sent her an image of his genitals and asked her for intimate images.

But he told police he could not recall those online chats.

Miss Waugh said the girl refused his demands, claiming she was not interested in him as she was a lesbian. Eventually, she informed her older sister and a complaint was made over Knight’s activities.

In both cases Knight, then aged 20, knew the girls were only aged 13. Knight, now 21, of Stavordale Street, admitted two counts of causing or inciting a girl under 16 to engage in sexual activity and one of distributing indecent images of a child, in sending the naked photos back to the second girl.

Laurie Scott, mitigating, said both girls lived some distance away, one in Wales, and the defendant was unlikely to act on his threats.

She said: “It’s an immature young man sitting at his computer at home with no more intention than engaging in sexual chat and receiving some sexual images. It has to be accepted the threats were unpleasant. These were completely idle threats by a young man at his computer, miles and miles away from the complainant.”

She added that it could be seen as “attention-seeking behaviour” for which Knight was “genuinely remorseful”.

Jailing him, Judge Christopher Prince told Knight there was, “an unpleasant element of blackmail exercised by you”, in trying to coerce the girls to send him images.

He was made subject of sex offender registration and a Sexual Harm Prevention Order, both for ten years.