Abuser becomes first to be jailed for encouraging child to self-harm

A married father has become the first person in the UK jailed for encouraging a child to self-harm – after he created a secret online world to control and abuse a young girl.

Karl Davies, from Merseyside, was jailed for 20 years today at Manchester Crown Court. He is the first person to be convicted under the new Online Safety Act for encouraging a child to self-harm.

He showed "no pity and no mercy" for the "catastrophic" impact on his victim and had a "monstrous sense of sexual entitlement", the court was told.

Davies began targeting the girl in October 2023, when she was 13. He posed as a young boy named Ben, who was around the same age.

Warning: This article contains details some may find distressing

They began talking on Discord, later moving to Snapchat - where he asked for pictures, before other accounts became involved.

At first, detectives thought the girl was being abused by six different men.

Some of them would threaten her, some would warn her about the others - telling her she was dealing with dangerous men with criminal backgrounds.

They conspired together to blackmail her into sending sexual photos and videos, eventually telling her to self-harm and record the evidence.

It wasn't long before officers discovered the accounts were all the same person. Davies had created a series of online personas, some completely fake, some using stolen identities - all designed to manipulate the girl.

Detective Sergeant Rob Griffiths, who led the investigation, said he quickly became suspicious the girl was being "catfished".

"He was putting her in a position where she was scared," DS Griffiths told Sky News.

He said Davies, 42, created one persona named Mark who came in "as a kind of saviour" - offering to help with the other accounts, telling them to stop speaking to her.

"Ultimately it was all Karl Davies - and this was just a sophisticated way of controlling a young girl," DS Griffiths said.

A razor blade and a scrunchie

Under the guise of Mark, in the summer of last year Davies began travelling to sexually abuse the girl in person - picking her up from school in "broad daylight" to sexually abuse her in his car on four occasions in the summer of 2024.

On one occasion he brought a razor blade and told her to use it. A blade and a girl's scrunchie were found by officers in his room.

Davies hid the grooming and abuse from his wife and children - pretending to travel for work. His wife began to suspect he was cheating.

She called a number she had found and a child picked up.

He was arrested after his victim told her stepmother of the abuse, and a video of Davies sexually abusing the girl was found on her phone by police.

Despite admitting the charges, Davies told probation services he was not sexually interested in children, even though he abused the girl in her school uniform and told her she had a "good body for a 14-year-old", the court heard.

"It's extremely concerning that Karl by all accounts is a family man," said DS Griffiths.

"He holds down a full-time job. And then on the other side of it, online he is a completely different person.

"He was a monster online - exploiting a young girl to control her entire life."

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One of the offences for which Davies has been jailed - assisting or encouraging another person to commit serious self-harm - is a new offence created by the 2023 Online Safety Act.

There has been one case so far where the victim was an adult, but Davies is the first person convicted of committing the offence against a child.

Zoe Becker from the Crown Prosecution Service says although this conviction is a first, they are seeing more and more cases like this.

"We do see a lot of cases of abuse that begin online, or that take place entirely online," she told Sky News.

"We see a lot of cases where the victim is as young as this."

She says such cases often involve hundreds, even thousands of disturbing photos, messages and videos which can "take a toll" on prosecutors tasked with going through the evidence.

Anyone feeling emotionally distressed or suicidal can call Samaritans for help on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org in the UK. In the US, call the Samaritans branch in your area or 1 (800) 273-TALK

(c) Sky News 2025: Abuser becomes first to be jailed for encouraging child to self-harm