WARNING, DISTRESSING CONTENT: Hugh Nelson, 27, has been jailed after he used his computer skills to make AI images of real children and create scenes of nudity, rape and torture
A sick pervert who used AI to create pornographic ‘deepfake’ photos of children has been jailed.
Hugh Nelson, 27, used his computer skills to alter innocent images of real children and create horrific scenes of nudity, rape and torture. Police searching his computer found a 1,391 prohibited images, including 56 ‘category A images’, which are the most serious. Bolton Crown Court heard he was the “administrator” of an internet chatroom for adults with a “sexual interest in young children” from June 2021 to June 2023. He told an undercover police officer that he “took commission from people” and had created over 60,000 “characters” using the software.
Nelson sent images showing child sexual activity to the undercover officer, and later said he was working on making images of a girl being abused in a nursery. He sent the officer a link to a storage folder with 299 images of children being raped or sexually abused, and some of these images showed these kids being beheaded. Nelson also told the officer that he believes he “provides a valuable service. since most people couldn’t sexually abuse their “niece or daughter”. Nelson, of Egerton, Greater Manchester, was found to have spoken to a man in Italy in 2021 about having pictures of a nine-year-old girl.
The man also commissioned Nelson to create an image of the girl “being kidnapped in a van and raped.” Nelson also exchanged messages about abusing an underaged girl in France and appeared to graphically encourage the man at the other end to abuse her. He then exchanged similar messages about a nine-year-old girl in America and was “commissioned” to create images of her in sexual scenes.
Nelson had also tried to incite a 15-year-old he was speaking to online, also in the US, to sexual activity and asked for sexual images. The Honorary Recorder for Bolton, Judge Martin Walsh said it was “impossible” to tell if these were in fact real children in the photos, but there was evidence that at least one of them was genuine. He said: “There seems to be no limit to the depths of depravity exhibited in the images that you were prepared to create and exhibit to others. This was not simply some form of perverted and grotesque fantasy.”
When police searched Nelson’s devices they also found many indecent images, including some which he had distributed to other people online. He was found to have a total of 1,391 prohibited images – including 56 ‘category A’ photos, 16 ‘category B’ ones and 47 ‘category C’ photographs.
For the crimes involving the undercover officer, Nelson pleaded guilty to four counts of distributing indecent images of children and to publishing an obscene article. He then pleaded guilty to three counts of encouraging offences, in each case the rape of a child under 13, and to attempting to incite a child under 16 to sex.
Nelson also admitted to three counts of disturbing indecent photographs of children and three counts of making indecent images of children. He also pleaded guilty to possessing prohibited images of children and was jailed for 18 years, with an extended licence period of six years. Judge Walsh also served with an indefinite sexual harm prevention order and ordered that he sign the sex offenders register for life.
