Matthew Falder, a prolific online paedophile, blackmailed his victims into sharing distressing images and horrifically shared a tutorial on how to exploit children sexually
Matthew Falder preyed on vulnerable victims before sharing photos of their abuse on the dark web.
On tonight’s (26 February) Channel 5’s Prime Suspect: Hunting the Predator, the documentary will look at the prolific online paedophile Matthew Falder. In 2018, he was sentenced to 32 years in prison for abusing and blackmailing a series of vulnerable victims, including a girl who he forced to eat dog food. His sentence has since been reduced to 25 years.
His offending dates back to 2009, when he was a 21-year-old student. He posed online as an unhappy female artist and used different accounts to lure his victims into sharing nude images. Falder would then blackmail his victims into sharing distressing images by threatening to distribute them to their family or friends if they failed to comply with his demands.
Following this, Falder would upload the images to “hurtcore” websites and clandestine dark web forums that specialised in sharing images and videos of rape, torture, paedophilia and degradation.
He shared a tutorial on how to exploit children sexually and offered advice on how to give youngsters sweets which were soaked in urine or semen. In subsequent social media posts, Falder detailed his horrific schemes of arranging meetings with blackmail victims at secluded spots. He chillingly described forcing them to tie themselves to trees, lock the restraints, and cast away the key, setting the stage for an agonising demise.
In one twisted ploy, he suggested a game where he’d insert a hot curling iron into a woman’s private parts, which could only be switched off if she correctly answered a quiz.
His perverse activities included a disturbing clip of a man heartlessly flinging a terrified child who couldn’t swim into a swimming pool; each horrid toss submerged the helpless youngster for several tortuous seconds. Another grisly footage featured a woman harshly assaulting a four-year-old boy with a stick.
Previous footage, taken inside the Cambridge University graduate’s cramped flat, showed clothes, food containers and laundry scattered across the floor – along with a roll of toilet paper on his bed. His desk was cluttered with rubbish and what appeared to be a tub of dried-up mushrooms. Other items that surrounded his desktop computer included multiple pairs of scissors, superglue, wine glasses, tissues and cloths.
The National Crime Agency (NCA) initiated a manhunt in April 2015 after he used the username ‘666devil’ to ask fellow dark web users for ideas on how to torture his ‘daughter’ as part of a ‘hell week’. This post triggered a nationwide search by the NCA to protect the girl, who turned out to be the daughter of another of Falder’s victims. Investigators linked the user to the ‘evilmind’ and ‘Inthegarden’ accounts, which Falder had used to torment his victims.
Intelligence gathered by NCA, US Homeland Security, Australian Federal Police and Europol linked a person of interest to an address in Birmingham. He was arrested in June 2017 after three traumatised victims, who were deceived into sending him degrading images, attempted to take their own lives.
Prime Suspect Hunting The Predator shows at 9pm tonight on Channel 5
