A former Suffolk man who forced a woman to abuse her child and record it has been found guilty by a jury.

Anthony Burns, 39, originally from Lowestoft, was delivered a guilty verdict by a unanimous jury at Birmingham Crown Court today.

Burns directed and controlled 39 women from all over the world in acts of online sexual behaviour between 2018 and 2020. He was also found guilty of two counts of making an eight-year-old girl engage in sexual activity - an offence similar to the one he was jailed for in 2010.

He was a 'pupil' of the notorious online child sex offender Adbul Elahi, who was jailed for 32 years in December 2021 after targeting 2,000 people globally to commit sadistic online abuse. Elahi would tutor Burns on the psychology of blackmail, including techniques such as scripted wording to help gain the trust of his victims. He also provided instruction on how they might respond to threats, and what to say to them in those situations.

Burns attempted to contact around 600 people around the world with the intention of sexually exploiting them, and work continues to be undertaken by international partners to identify any more of his victims.

Burns would sometimes pose as a modelling agent in order to gain access to sexual images of girls that he messaged online. Once, he posed as an officer at the National Crime Agency. He also contacted women using dating sites such as Sugar Daddy, before moving their conversations to Whatsapp, which has end-to-end encryption. This meant that when he sent messages he could delete them from both his phone and his victims', removing any visible evidence of his actions.

Through the messaging service, Burns would ask the women to send sexual photographs or videos in exchange for cash - around £600 - which he never paid. He recorded video calls with his victims, in which he would direct and control them into carrying out explicit sexual activity.

Once he had received the images and videos he would then use this content to manipulate his victims to produce more sexually explicit content. Burns would threaten to expose the footage to the victims' families and friends until they complied, and the women he was in contact with would end up trapped.

The jury in his trial was told that in August 2020 Burns blackmailed a woman from the US into performing sexual acts on herself before sexually abusing her daughter, an eight-year-old girl. The woman has also been jailed for her part in the abuse.

Burns was arrested by National Crime Agency officers in February 2019, and he had his mobile phone and computers seized and forensically examined. 

NCA Operations Manager Robert Slater said: "Anthony Burns showed remorseless cruelty in controlling and coercing his victims, including very young children, into acts which have left them severely traumatised."

Burns was charged with 46 counts including blackmail, attempted blackmail, causing a child under 13 to engage in sexual activity, arranging the commission of a child sex offence; making and distributing indecent images of children (IIOC), possessing extreme pornography, malicious communications offences and failure to comply with notification requirements.

He was described by the prosecution in the case as a "controlling and manipulative sexual predator."

Nigel Whalley, an investigator at the NCA’s Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, said that there is evidence that Burns was speaking with women from across the UK, the Channel Islands, US and Australia.

The judge warned Burns that he would face a "significant custodial sentence" and his sentencing has been set for January 18, 2024.