Paedophiles jailed after cyber chat

Three paedophiles who planned to rape two young girls they had targeted over the Internet were jailed for a total of 27 years yesterday in what police said was the first case in Britain to use cyber chat as evidence.

David Beavan, Alan Hedgcock and Robert Mayers used the Internet to put together their conspiracy to kidnap the two girls, aged 13 and 14, take them to woods and rape them.

Detective Constable Dave Adams, from the Metropolitan Police's Child Abuse Investigation Command, said: "These three men took a step beyond fantasy and had actually identified the children they would target, the location where they would approach them and what exactly they planned to do to them. "It is appalling to consider the potential repercussions if this hadn't come to police notice.

"This is a really significant investigation because for the first time Internet chat logs have been used to prove a charge of conspiracy to rape a child. This case should act as a really stark warning that the Internet is not a hiding place to plan and participate in criminal acts."

The plot was exposed when Mr Beavan, a 42-year-old shop worker from Bransgore, Hampshire, went to a police station in Bournemouth in January 2006 and admitted he had become involved in accessing indecent pictures of children over the web.