Paedophile Martyn Armstrong was arrested following a 17 year-long investigation. Source: Twitter
Welsh (UK): A new technology allowed police to unpixelate the face of a pedophile from the grainy videos he himself had shot 17 years ago while committing the crime.
Reports say that between 2005 and 2007, Martyn Armstrong of Pembrokeshire filmed himself raping, sexually assaulting, and abusing children.
The 50-year-old targeted three victims, one of whom was as young as one, and posted photos and videos of himself on the dark web with his face obscured.
He was apprehended 17 years later after police created a tool that allowed them to identify him in his own videos.
Armstrong was sentenced to life in prison after being charged with numerous crimes, many of which he shared with other depraved perverts on the dark web.
He admitted guilt to making, disseminating, and possessing indecent images of children in relation to both of the victims as well as a third victim on a total of 41 counts of rape of a child under the age of 13 and sexual assaultinvolving two victims.
Prosecutor Roger Griffiths told Cardiff Crown Court that Armstrong took the photographs of him abusing children between 2005 and 2007, as well as between December 16, 2009, and February 6, 2011, and that he admitted to photographing a third child on a beach in 2010.
Under the file name ‘Father Jones’, Armstrong had uploaded a collection of 200 incredibly graphic images as well as a video showing him repeatedly raping his youngest victim.
Due to the file being shared and downloaded across 18 countries including South America, Australia, and Europe but not in UK. Since 2013, the series has been well known to law enforcement agencies around the world, reports claimed.
In early 2022, the folder was still being shared across six websites in the United Kingdom, and police forces had discovered it in 583 forensic submissions.
Armstrong, according to the prosecutor, used Photoshop to create a zig-zag distortion across his image but made no attempt to conceal the identities of his victims.
Investigators were unable to identify the paedophile for nearly a decade due to his face being blurred, despite efforts by law enforcement partners from Australia, Italy, and France, with an officer from the latter countryidentifying the exact beach location in Wales that had featured in some of the images.
Reports say that in July 2022, The National Crime Agency officers used their new tool to unpixelate the image that had zig zag distortion in order to identify and arrest the accused.
The software was created by NCA officers in the United Kingdom and is the world’s first of its kind. It is expected that the programme will aid in the identification of future perpetrators.
Post his arrest, police also seized a number of his devices in which a troubling cache of images, including 789 category A, 989 category B, and 2227 category C images, were found reportedly.
Prosecutor Griffiths stated, “Armstrong was tracked down and asked if he was guilty of the offences, to which he answered “to some of them yes.”
Armstrong admitted to distributing photos and naming the Father Jones series, as well as photographing one of his victims on a beach, telling officers, “I always have a camera with me.”
Adam Sharp, who defended Armstrong in court said. “He(Armstrong) does not want me to attempt to minimize the perversity of his actions or the impact they had on his victims,”.
The defendant further added that his client has taken full responsibility for his actions, but asked the judge to take into account how he cooperated with officers and had led them to identify other victims.
During the trial, the court also heard one of his victim’s statements which read, “The second I saw the piece of paper (with the images), it felt like I couldn’t breathe”.
“I saw my smiley, younger self full of happiness, confidence and innocence. I am no longer able to look at these pictures without a rush of panic and heartache,” said the victims.
They further added that he felt betrayed, manipulated and deceived.
Addressing Armstrong, they said: ‘You abused me, manipulated me and have forever darkened a piece of my childhood.
Armstrong was handed over to a life imprisonment with a minimum term of 14 years jail term.
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