A former police informant who spied on environmental and animal rights activists has been sentenced to life in prison for a series of paedophile offences. Nick Gratwick, 68, from Mitcham, south London, was found guilty of 38 charges, including plotting to rape children as young as six.
Judge Harden-Frost described Gratwick's crimes as 'utterly depraved and manipulative, and the stuff of nightmares'. The judge ordered that he serve a minimum of 19 years before being eligible for parole, calling him a 'dangerous' paedophile who had not admitted his guilt.
Between 2023 and 2025, Gratwick exchanged hundreds of encrypted messages with other abusers, arranged to pay a Romanian mother to rape her 10-year-old daughter, and advised others on how to drug and abuse children. He was arrested at Stansted Airport as he prepared to fly to Bucharest to carry out the rape. Police found more than 1,300 images and videos of child abuse in his possession.
During his trial, it emerged that Gratwick had worked as a police informant in the 1990s and 2000s, infiltrating environmental and animal rights groups. He posed as an activist and passed information to police. One of the protests he infiltrated was the campaign against the Newbury bypass in Berkshire, where he helped organise activists while secretly reporting to police via a private security firm.
Gratwick also spied on animal rights groups, including the campaign against Huntingdon Life Sciences. His role as an informant was confirmed in court documents, which stated he provided information on animal rights and environmental matters for about six years between 1995 and 2003. The jury rejected his claim that he had created a false identity to gather evidence against paedophiles.
