L Walker 
A dangerous and wealthy sex offender who wrote sick fantasies about raping Madeleine McCann and murder victim Alesha McPhail has been jailed.
John Lennon was trapped by an undercover police operation in which he sent child rape videos to them on the dark web and boasted of having sex with toddlers.
His fantasies included the rapes of four-year-old Madeleine McCann, who vanished in Portugal in 2007, and six-year-old Alesha, who was murdered in Scotland in 2018.
He even sent a picture of Alesha to the undercover officer, who was posing as a fellow paedophile and said he had loved reading the news reports about her murder.
Wealthy businessman Lennon was already on the sex offenders register because he had tried to groom a nine-year-old girl and distributed child rape images in 2018.
He was actually attending a sex offenders treatment course where he posed as a reformed character at the same time as he was exchanging his perverted fantasies online.
Lennon, aged 48, of Torquay, admitted three counts of making and three of distributing indecent images of children and was jailed for five years with a four year extended licence by Judge Timothy Rose at Exeter Crown Court.
He was put on the sex offenders register for life and made subject to an indefinite Sexual Harm Prevention Order, which bans any future contact with children and enables the police to monitor his internet activity.
The judge told him:”You made it clear in your correspondence with the officers what your thoughts were and what your fantasies were in terms of the appalling sexual abuse of children you had in mind.
“Such was the extent of the depravity to which you sank that you brought in references to very real tragedies relating to Madeleine McCann and Alesha MacPhail, who was murdered in Scotland.
“You have not just relapsed into the illegal use of internet pornography, you have completely submerged yourself into it and given full rein to your thought processes about young children.
“You shared images of particularly young children and expressed the view that your preferred age was from a few months to two. Some of the images showed children in discernible pain and distress.
“I have no hesitation in concluding you are a dangerous offender and there is a significant risk of harm to children.”
Miss Emily Pitts, prosecuting, said two undercover police made contact with Lennon on a Russian hosted file sharing site between June and November last year.
He used three different e-mail address but was traced as the sender. He sent six videos showing the rape or serious abuse of babies or young toddlers, who he described as sluts in his messages.
He sent 20 messages asking to swap abuse images and in total, he sent 29 videos or stills. One showed a child of about three being abused with an electric toothbrush. One message said he was watching young girls at a school as he sent it.
In another, he said he had just come back from Portugal, where he had been staying near the resort where Madeleine McCann disappeared. He wrote horrific messages about the missing girl.
He said he enjoyed reading about Alesha’s murder and said he would ‘love to snatch a girl from her bedroom’.
He claimed to have had sex with toddlers and police recovered a bag full of child’s clothing from his home.
Mr Joss Ticehurst, defending, said Lennon has sought private counseling to change his behaviour, which arises out of an abusive childhood and post traumatic stress disorder from his service in the army and the police.
He said these offences happened when Lennon’s marriage had broken up and when he was spending a lot of time staying in hotels and drinking too much.
He has contributed to society by running his own businesses and had helped to save the life of a cyclist who was injured in an accident in Bristol two years ago.
