Febuary 2010 Boy racer net site was set up by paedophile A Paedophile used his boy racer website to groom young girls for sex. The vulnerable girls were among members who signed up to Essex Racers, a car enthusiasts’ website which organised meets in car parks in Chelmsford, Braintree and other towns off the A12. The website’s twisted creator, Tom Cooper, exploited his access to members’ e-mail addresses to groom the girls and when police raided the 25-year-old’s home in Main Road, Romford, in March 2008 they uncovered 28,000 indecent images of children. Cooper was jailed by a judge at Basildon Crown Court after pleading guilty to 13 counts of possessing indecent images, eight counts of inciting children to share indecent images with him, two sexual assaults and grooming a 15-year-old girl and arranging to meet her for sex. Investigating officer Detective Inspector Keith Oddy said: “Cooper was described in court as a dangerous offender. “He would strike up conversations with these girls and then go on to demand, very persistently, that they share indecent images with him.” Essex Racers operated for about three years, with up to 3,500 members at a time, before being shut down in January 2008. Police seized computers, laptops and storage discs at Cooper’s address, with 27,954 indecent images, a “significant proportion” of which pictured girls below the age of 13. The court heard Cooper abused his power to unblock girl-only chat rooms and liaise with his victims between June 2005 and December 2007. More than 70,000 pages of online chat logs between “Tommy” and young girls were discovered. Mr Eaton said: “It was evident the defendant was encouraging and inciting the girls to send him indecent pictures of themselves. Some of the girls were as young as 12.” In September 2007 Cooper took a 15-year-old to his address and had sex with her. He groped another 13-year-old girl over her clothes and tried to kiss her in his car after asking her to be his girlfriend. Judge Michael Brooke gave Cooper credit for his guilty pleas before sentencing him to four years for sexual assault on a 15-year-old, four years for grooming, two-and-a-half-years for each count of inciting children to share indecent images, one year for each count of possession and distribution of indecent images, and one year for sexual assault on a 14-year-old. The sentences will run concurrently with Cooper spending two years in prison before being released on licence. He will be on the sex offenders register for life and subject to a sexual offences prevention order. Judge Brooke said: “None of these girls seem to have suffered distress or trauma as a result of being involved in this activity but it’s clearly activity that exposes these girls to a premature inappropriate sexualisation.” They were an “impressionable age” and Cooper’s crimes carried a “significant risk” of affecting their quality of life and their sexual behaviour in the future.