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.
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 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.
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.
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.
“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.”
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 [email protected] in the UK. In the US, call the Samaritans branch in your area or 1 (800) 273-TALK
