A PERVERT who persuaded a 13-year-old girl to send him indecent photographs of herself, and then threatened to send them to her family, has been jailed.

Bolton Crown Court heard how Sri Lanka-born university student Shanil Mendis threatened to distribute the pictures and videos of the girl — who he had never met — after she broke off contact with him.

Mendis, aged 22, who is in his second year of an aircraft engineering degree course at Salford University, pleaded guilty to two counts of inciting a child to sexual activity, three offences of possessing indecent images of a child and one of stalking.

Judge Timothy Stead told him his offending was so serious that he felt compelled to send him to jail for 18 months.

He told the offender: “What you were doing was threatening a child who already had a number of vulnerabilities.

“This was a child who you had groomed via the internet and a child who must have been terrified of indecent images of herself being posted on the internet for all the world to see.”

The court heard that Mendis, formerly of Maple Avenue, Bury, and of Victoria Lane, Whitefield, committed his offences against the girl for a year, commencing in May, 2014.

Charlotte Crangle, prosecuting, said that the girl, in the hope of making new friends, had asked a friend to broadcast her Blackberry Messenger pin number.

Mendis responded, but pretended to be female, even sending pictures of a woman he claimed was him.

Miss Crangle added: “At this stage she (the victim) was going through a difficult personal time.

“She believed she may be bisexual and used the person to confide in.”

She sent him explicit photographs and videos of herself on Instagram before eventually discovering Mendis was in fact male in October, 2014.

Miss Crangle said the girl was unnerved by the discovery, but Mendis demanded that she stay in touch with him.

He went on to inform the girl that if she failed to obey his wishes, he would tell her friends and family she was bisexual and publicise her photographs.

The girl and Mendis never met but she was forced to send him intimate and sexually provocative images and videos.

Mendis insisted her face be shown on the images.

Miss Crangle added: “She (the girl) describes how the defendant would be angry if she hadn’t done it correctly.”

In April, 2015, the girl broke off contact with Mendis on Instagram and refused his request to befriend her on Facebook.

He then sent her another request using a profile picture of her in her underwear and bearing the message: ‘Do you want your friends and family to see this?’

The girl rang Childline and disclosed what was happening to her to a teacher, her mum and boyfriend. But even after she made a complaint to the police Mendis continued to demand the girl contact him.He sent her pictures she had previously sent to him and threatened to put them on pornographic websites.He also attempted to contact her mother on Facebook. Police managed to trace Mendis via his university and he was arrested.

Miss Crangle said: “He admitted threatening her but said it was because he wanted her to get in touch with him.”

In a victim statement, which was read out in court, the girl’s mother said her daughter had previously been a normal, happy teenager but had now become a different person following her experience.

Kevin Liston, defending, accepted that Mendis’ action had been “deeply unpleasant”, but the student maintained he would not have carried out his threats.

He added that in 2014 Mendis was a “sexually inexperienced teenager, studying in a foreign country and isolated”.

Mr Liston added: “He felt a degree of relationship present, albeit inappropriate.

“He is sorry, not just over being caught, but over the insidious dawning reality of of what he has done.”

Judge Stead was particularly critical of Mendis threatening to disclose photographs of his victim and the possible repercussions for the girl if the images had been distributed to a wider audience.

“That would strike anybody, either adult or child, vulnerable or robust, with a sense of horror and dread,” he said.

In addition to the jail term, Mendis was placed on the sex offenders register for 10 years.

A sexual harm prevention order was also made banning him from contacting his victim or any girl under the age of 16.