A man from Runcorn who helped run a dark web child abuse site used by nearly 90,000 people worldwide has been jailed for 16 years. Nathan Bake, 28, acted as head moderator for the website known as The Annexe, which had hundreds of links to child sexual abuse images, including those involving babies and toddlers.
Chester Crown Court heard that Bake offered advice to other members on how to avoid being caught and encouraged them to post abuse images. One message he posted read: 'Come on people, let's see what you've got for happy hour.' The National Crime Agency (NCA) said the site was 'run very much like a business', with 30 people around the world working in shifts to moderate it.
Police found hundreds of thousands of abuse images on a hard drive at Bake's home, as well as indecent images on his mobile phone. The prosecution said Bake lived alone and spent most of his spare time using or moderating the site. Bake admitted facilitating child sexual abuse, making and distributing abuse images, possessing extreme pornography and a paedophile manual, and being a member of an organised crime group.
Judge Patrick Thompson branded Bake a 'serious danger' to children and ordered him to stay on the sex offenders register for life. He said websites like The Annexe allow paedophiles to normalise and rationalise their behaviour, which leads directly to images being made and children being abused. Bake's defence counsel said he recognised the seriousness of his offences but was not involved in directly abusing children. The court heard he was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome at age 16.
