A SOLDIER who paid a paedophile £50 to rape a three-year-old child so he could watch has been jailed for more than 27 years.

A children's charity has reacted with disbelief to the case of depraved Christopher Thompson, who was also given a five-year licence period for public protection.

The 26-year-old trawled social media sites looking for young victims and contacted children online for sex in 7,000 messages.

He targeted young boys using a online social network called Tagged - where an employee from the company spotted his indecent exchanges and alerted US police.

Prosecutor Paul Cleasby told Teesside Crown Court how Thompson, who had previously lived in Darlington, would send explicit pictures and videos of himself to his victims and ask them to do the same.

He also suggested meeting in hotels, his car or on camping trips for sex and offered to pay for sex with children in cash, trips to the cinema or presents.

Thompson said he was interested in children aged “0 to 17” and asked for images of babies while he befriended a teenage boy on a gay dating site before meeting him for sex.

The court also heard he groomed and manipulated another teenage boy and sent explicit images of children as young as four to ten other paedophiles.

Thompson at one point followed a young boy playing on a scooter in east Cleveland, bought him cigarettes, and took him to a garage where he exposed himself and carried out a sex act.

The boy’s father and others later chased Thompson and pulled him from train tracks to face police as he shouted: “I shouldn’t have done it. I’m sorry. I’d rather kill myself.”

The video of the rape was taken by Aaron Hughes, from Cardiff, who was jailed for life in 2014 for raping drugging and raping a little boy in attacks he filmed on his mobile phone.

When Hughes - who also led a double-life as a cross-dressing singer and the leader of a ghost-hunting gang - sent Thompson the clips, the disgraced military man replied: “Wow”.

Thompson admitted 12 charges of sexual activity with a child, sexual activity in the presence of a child, inciting a child to engage in sexual activity, causing a child to watch a sexual activity, attempting to arrange a child sex offence, and making and distributing indecent photographs of children.

The mother of one victim told of her horror, in a statement to the court, and said: “I find it difficult to believe an adult would stoop so low.”

Brendan Carville, defending, said Thompson committed the crimes because of deep-rooted issues from his own childhood experience.

He said Thompson was an educated man of previous good character and had served his country with an “exemplary” Army record.

Judge Howard Crowson said the “chilling” communications leading to the filmed rape of a vulnerable child for money were the most serious in Thompson’s catalogue of crimes.

Jailing Thompson for 27 years and eight months, the judge told him: “This offence was committed at your request, for your pleasure.”

Thompson, whose address on court documents is Holme House Prison, Stockton, was given a lifetime sexual harm prevention order and will be on the sex offenders’ register for life.

The NSPCC said after the case: “It is beyond belief that Thompson paid to watch the cruel rape of a three-year-old and the sentence reflects the severity of this sickening crime.

“Every indecent image or video found online is a visual record of a serious sexual assault and it is right that Thompson is behind bars.

“We know that around half a million men in the UK today may have accessed child sexual abuse images online and the work of government, law enforcement, internet companies and others must continue to tackle this growing issue.”

  • Adults concerned about a child can contact the NSPCC helpline in confidence, 24 hours a day seven days a week, on 0800 808 5000. Children can contact Childline on 0800 1111 or at www.childline.org.uk.