A SOLDIER who sexually abused children and chatted to a 12-year-old boy from Leigh online and exchanged indecent images with him has been jailed for more than 27 years.

Paedophile Christopher Thompson trawled social media sites looking for young boys and contacted children online for sex in 7,000 messages.

The 26-year-old targeted victims using an online social network called Tagged.

An employee from the company spotted his indecent exchanges and alerted police in America.

Prosecutor Paul Cleasby told Teesside Crown Court that Thompson, who had previously lived in Darlington, sent explicit pictures and videos of himself to his victims and asked them to do the same.

Thompson also suggested meeting in hotels, his car or on camping trips for sex and offered to pay for sex with children in cash, trips to the cinema or presents.

He said he was interested in children aged 'zero to 17' and asked for images of babies while he befriended a teenage boy on a gay dating site before meeting him for sex.

The court heard Thompson sent explicit images of children as young as four to 10 other paedophiles.

Thompson at one point followed a young boy playing on a scooter in East Cleveland in the north east, bought him cigarettes and took him to a garage, where he exposed himself and carried out a sex act.

The boy’s father and others later chased Thompson and pulled him from train tracks to face police as he shouted: “I shouldn’t have done it. I am sorry. I would rather kill myself.”

The court also heard that disgraced military man Thompson replied to a video sent to him of a boy being drugged and raped with the word 'wow'.

It was sent to him by Cardiff paedophile Aaron Hughes, who was jailed for life in 2014 for the rape of the boy.

Thompson admitted 12 charges of sexual activity with a child, sexual activity in the presence of a child, inciting a child to engage in sexual activity, causing a child to watch a sexual activity, attempting to arrange a child sex offence and making and distributing indecent photographs of children.

In a statement read out to the court, the mother of one victim said: “I find it difficult to believe an adult would stoop so low.”

Brendan Carville, defending, said Thompson committed the crimes because of deep-rooted issues from his own childhood experience.

He said Thompson was an educated man of previous good character and had served his country with an 'exemplary' army record.

Judge Howard Crowson said the 'chilling' communications leading to the filmed rape of a vulnerable child for money were the most serious in Thompson’s catalogue of crimes.

Jailing Thompson for 27 years and eight months on Monday, the judge told him: “This offence was committed at your request, for your pleasure.”

Thompson, whose address on court documents is Holme House Prison, Stockton, was given a lifetime sexual harm prevention order and will be on the sex offenders’ register for life.