Paedophile soldier jailed for three years after police sting

A former soldier has been jailed after trying to sexually abuse a child and having a catalogue of disgusting and disturbing images on his computer.

Adam David Bonner, 19, was serving as a soldier at Catterick Garrison barracks when he was caught by North Yorkshire Police's Online Child Abuse Team (OCAT) for crimes which spanned the country.

Bonner, from Middlesbrough, has now been locked up for over three years after being sentenced at York Crown Court.

He pleaded guilty to 11 offences relating to child sex crimes back in July and has now been sentenced to three years and four months in a Young Offender Institution.

Bonner's crimes included making and distributing indecent images of children in categories A, B and C, as well as engaging and attempting to engage in sexual communication with a child.

He also possessed a prohibited image of a child attempting to cause a girl aged under 13 to engage in sexual activity and attempted to cause a child under 13 to look at an image of sexual activity.

The disgraced former soldier also possessed an extreme pornographic image involving an animal.

His offending first came to the attention of North Yorkshire Police’s Online Child Abuse Team in March 2025, when a computer he was suspected to be using to download hundreds of indecent images of children was traced to his previous army barracks in Devon.

Following enquiries to establish his identity, he was arrested at Catterick Garrison the following month on 16 April.

OCAT detectives, with assistance from the Digital Forensics team, were able to prove a catalogue of offending which spanned the country where Bonner had been stationed with the army.

This included Dorset, in Scotland, and his hometown of Middlesbrough.

As well as the three year custodial sentence, Bonner has also been placed on the Register of Sex Offenders, barred from working with children and vulnerable adults, and handed a 10-year Sexual Harm Prevention Order.

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Detective Sergeant Graeme Bevington, from the North Yorkshire Police Online Child Abuse Team, said: “We were able to seize numerous digital devices in Bonner’s army quarters which all linked back to him.

“From the point of his arrest, we were able to quickly establish that he had a large amount of child sexual abuse material in his possession along with extreme images involving a child and another involving an animal.

“We were also able to prove his efforts to engage in sexual communication with children and causing a child to engage in sexual activity.

“His offending is truly reprehensible, and we are glad that Bonner is now behind bars for a significant period of time.

“Crucially, he will be subject to robust public protection measures for the rest of his life.”

The police arrest approximately 1,000 suspected child sexual abuse and exploitation offenders every month, or around 12,000 annually, across England and Wales.

Over 1,200 children are safeguarded or rescued from potential harm every month through these active interventions.

Arrest numbers have scaled drastically due to increased digital intelligence, with historical annual figures showing over 1,362 arrests in single targeted national campaigns and rising multi-fold over the past decade.

Globally, organisations like Childlight estimate that over 300 million children are victims of online sexual exploitation and abuse annually, driven by encrypted apps, social media algorithms, and peer-to-peer networks.