I posted a video to my Instagram this week of British Transport Police meeting a train at London Euston and arresting a man. His name is David Johnson. He’s 35. He was sat on an ordinary service from Stafford to London, on an ordinary weekday, watching videos of a child being abused on his phone, a couple of seats away from a stranger who noticed and did something about it. He’s now serving two years and three months for it, with a ten-year Sexual Harm Prevention Order attached.1
What does a child predator actually look like? After eight years inside the evidence, I can answer that properly. They look like whoever is sitting next to you.
Why the Comments Under That Video Worry Me More Than the Video Itself
The clip was reposted, and within hours the comments underneath it had stopped being about the crime. They’d turned into a debate about his background, his religion, where he must “really” be from. That happens every single time a clip like this goes round, and every single time it’s wrong.
Over the years I spent investigating cases like his, I can tell you there was no type. The offenders I dealt with came from all walks of life, all ages, all races, all creeds. The only reason this particular man got caught is that he was careless and overt about it, and thankfully the person sitting near him did the right thing. He wasn’t wearing a badge, there was no sign over his head telling anyone what he was. Most people who do this wear a mask so nobody suspects them, and most wear it well.
Why I Don’t Trust a Job Title to Keep A Child Safe
It’s not only strangers on trains. Some of the hardest cases I worked involved people in positions of trust, including police officers. Investigating people like that taught me something I think every parent should know. Predators often want to be in positions of power or trust precisely because it gives them a layer of credibility that removes them from suspicion, and sometimes because it puts them close to people who are vulnerable.
The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) has said for years that abuse of position for a sexual purpose is the single largest category of corruption it investigates, accounting for around a quarter of all corruption referrals it receives.2 That is not a problem confined to one bad apple. It is what happens when trust goes unchecked, in any profession, anywhere.
In cybersecurity, we have a phrase for this, don’t trust, always verify. The same principle applies to protecting your children. Not suspicion of every adult in their life, but verification instead of blind assumption. Trust what someone’s actions have actually shown you, not the impression they’ve built or the uniform they wear.
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Why ‘It Won’t Happen to My Child’ Is the Sentence That Worries Me Most
It’s human nature to want to believe it won’t happen to your child. But every parent of a child who has become a victim of one of these predators probably believed exactly the same thing, right up until they didn’t. I would rather parents changed how they think now, than have it take that horror actually happening to them.
The National Crime Agency (NCA) has been blunt about the scale of this. Officers and staff are dealing with around 1,700 referrals a week, making roughly 1,000 arrests a month, and safeguarding around 1,200 children a month across the UK and they’ve been explicit that potential offenders exist in every community, with victims in every school3. This is not a rare, distant problem.
The years I spent inside the evidence. That’s the reason I spend so much of my time now trying to prevent children from becoming that evidence themselves. I know exactly how easily it can happen when people stick their heads in the sand.
Was Two Years and Three Months Enough?
Here’s where I’ll be honest with you rather than tidy. Johnson pleaded guilty to six counts of making indecent images of children, two counts of attempting to engage a child in sexual communication, and one count of arranging or facilitating a child sex offence. That isn’t the profile of a single lapse in judgement, that’s a pattern. He got two years and three months, a ten-year Sexual Harm Prevention Order and ten years on the sex offenders register.
It genuinely angers me that a sentence like that can feel so light against what a charge sheet like his actually represents. A register that runs for ten years isn’t a register that runs for life and I don’t understand what’s supposed to happen once those ten years are up. People who produce and spread this material hand down a life sentence to their victims, to those victims’ families, and to everyone involved in investigating or supporting recovery from it. In my honest opinion, they deserve a life sentence back, at the very least.
I’ll own my bias here. Years of looking at what these people do to children don’t leave you neutral and I don’t believe there is a route back from it for them. That’s not a clinical view, it’s a human one, shaped by what I’ve seen. You’re free to disagree with me on that, but don’t expect me to change my opinion and don’t be surprised if I show a range of difficult emotions.
What I want to leave you with is hope, not despair. You can’t control sentencing. You can control how your children learn to judge who’s safe and it starts with teaching them that trust is earned through what someone does, never assumed from how they look, what they wear, or what they claim to be. It is also up to you to be the safe space that they know they can come to no matter what. If a child believes they will get into trouble or be punished, they will keep it secret and secrecy is what a predator thrives on.
As always, thank you for your support. Please share this across your social media, and if you do have any comments, questions, or concerns, then feel free to reach out to me via the Social page, as I am always happy to spend some time helping to protect children online.
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British Transport Police, ‘Man jailed after viewing child sex abuse on a train – London’, btp.police.uk, accessed 9 September 2026.
Independent Office for Police Conduct, ‘There must be nowhere to hide for police who abuse their position for a sexual purpose’, policeconduct.gov.uk, 25 October 2021, accessed 9 September 2026.
National Crime Agency, quoted in Express & Star, 'Potential offenders are in every community and victims in every school', expressandstar.com, accessed 9 September 2026.