John Marsh 
Updated July 18th, 2019
Jordan Parnham, 23, held his head in his hands and sobbed in the dock as Judge Peter Kelson QC sentenced him to life, with a minimum of eight years behind bars. Parnham admitted raping two children under eight, one of whom is a toddler, at a previous hearing. The judge underlined that the eight years was just the the least time Parnham would serve for his ‘shocking’ crimes. The parole board would have to consider the risk he poses to the public before he could be released.
The judge said: ‘For my part, I cannot envisage a date when you could be considered anything less than a significant danger to children’. Parnham’s sickening abuse came to light after he told contacts on the Dark Web that he was going to live stream a video of him sexually abusing a toddler on January 30.
South Yorkshire Police raided his home in Barnsley on February 22, as soon as they managed to crack his real identity through the alias he used online. Sheffield Crown Court was told when Parnham handed over his mobile to police, he admitted: ‘There’s some disgusting stuff on here’. Among the files the shocked officers found a video he had taken of himself raping a little girl. Prosecutor, Simon Reevell, said the Crown had not been able to recover any evidence of Parnham ‘live-streaming’ the video. But Parnham admitted he had shared it with a group of people he met on the Dark Web. A stash of child porn was also found on his phone. The investigation also revealed he had raped a young boy around 12 months before his crimes came to light.
Matthew Harding, mitigating, claimed Parnham’s crimes were not as serious as other cases in the top bracket for child rape offences. The barrister added that Parnham ‘accepted the ‘enormity’ of what he had done’.
Jailing him, Judge Kelson said he ‘could not conceive of a more serious case’, adding: ‘Your offending borders on being unimaginable, it’s unthinkable….it’s so beyond the pale to have done that…to have filmed that. ‘You uploaded to the internet the recording of this shocking rape, and shared it with like-minded individuals.’ Parnham was also placed on the sex offenders’ register and made the subject of an indefinite sexual harm prevention order.
