Numerous online child sex offences including making arrangements to abuse a seven year-old girl

Man Jailed for Nine Years for Child Sex Offences

Luke Cowling, 27, of Tavistock Road, Launceston, was sentenced to nine years in prison at Truro Crown Court on Friday 23 August. Cowling pleaded guilty to a range of offenses, including distributing and making indecent photographs of children, attempting to arrange/facilitate the sexual abuse of children, and causing or inciting the sexual exploitation of children.

The investigation began in August 2021 when the National Crime Agency (NCA) alerted Devon and Cornwall Police about a KiK account linked to Cowling, which had uploaded a Category A indecent video of a child. The Metropolitan Regional Organised Crime Unit also contacted the police after Cowling engaged in online conversations with an undercover officer posing as an adult expressing sexual interest in children. During these conversations, Cowling discussed meeting the profile to rape the person's seven-year-old daughter.

A search warrant was executed at Cowling's home, and various devices were seized. Examination of these devices revealed that Cowling had been in communication with a convicted paedophile in Merseyside who has since been jailed. The two exchanged tens of thousands of messages, with Cowling directing the other man to photograph and video abuse his adopted children and send it to him.

Cowling and the other paedophile exchanged various child abuse images and videos, with Cowling even getting the other man to produce a contract acknowledging that he was a paedophile and that Cowling was his master. Cowling was also found to have distributed child abuse images to other online users.

Officer Sophie House, who led the investigation, stated, "This was a complex police investigation which incorporated work from both the D&C Paedophile Online Investigation Team, The Merseyside Paedophile Online Investigation Team, the National Crime Agency, and the Metropolitan Regional Organised Crime Unit. We welcome today's sentence and hope this conviction serves as a stark warning to those with an unlawfully blurred view of consent and the wider implications of child sexual abuse material. Cowling and the other individual's relationship was a true meeting of wicked minds, in addition to Cowling's entrenched sexual interest in child sexual abuse material."