UK paedophile used 2 Indian teens to source videos of sexual abuse perpetrated on children

Matthew Smith is believed to have been involved in child sexual abuse while in India between 2007 and 2014, before he moved to Nepal and then back to the UK.

Law enforcement in the UK announced the arrest of a man from London who allegedly paid two teenagers in India ₹65 lakh over five years to sexually assault boys and share images, busting what could be part of a larger child porn racket.

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Matthew Smith, 34, is also believed to have been involved in child sexual abuse while in India between 2007 and 2014, before he moved to Nepal and eventually back to the UK.

“Thousands of images and videos were recovered from his devices which showed an appalling catalogue of sexual abuse being perpetrated on children. Smith offered individuals payments for indecent images to gratify his own sexual desires, which resulted in the horrifying abuse of young children in India,” said Claire Brinton, specialist prosecutor in the Crown Prosecution Service’s (CPS) Organised Child Sexual Abuse Unit.

He has plead guilty to the allegations.

Smith was educated at Oxford and Cambridge and was employed at Thomas’s prep school in Battersea, which was once attended by Prince George and Princess Charlotte, the grandchildren of King Charles.

Indian agencies, the CPS said, are now in the process of identifying Smith’s victims and accomplices who helped him in carrying on the abuses.

In India, Smith worked in orphanages and at NGOs. In July 2022, he came back to the UK and started working as a primary school teacher, rising to the position of deputy head teacher. It is believed that it was during his presence in India that he managed to build a network of child sexual abuse accomplices and kept it going after moving to the UK.

Smith’s modus operandi was to manipulate teenage boys in India and give them tips on how to befriend minors, prosecutors said. In some instances, Smith would send the teenage boys videos and images of sexual acts that he wanted performed, filmed and sent to him.

In the Southwark crown court, he was described as a prolific offender who manipulated young men to sexually abuse children on his behalf. The court was told that over 120,000 indecent images were recovered from him, which were saved on laptop, a mobile phone and an SD card.

Smith came under the radar after it was established by UK agencies that he was sharing images of child sexual abuse on the dark web. When his flat was raided in November 2022, he was in fact speaking to a teenage boy in India negotiating a deal to have sexual images of a minor sent to him for money.

Smith was initially charged with five offences relating to sexual exploitation of a child, but over the last few months, as the probe widened, it was established that he had indulged in more serious acts. Accordingly, he was charged with encouraging the rape of minors and for arranging the sexual abuse of children.

There have been no known previous convictions or charges against Smith in the UK and the fact that he continued to work in a primary school in London while simultaneously facilitating the sexual abuse of minors in India have set an alarm bell.

The Southwark crown court, where Smith pleaded guilty to all the charges on Tuesday, will sentence him in August 2023.