Were 49 Young Girls Duped Into Webcam Sex By A Man Posing As A Teen Lesbian?

How does a 39-year-old married father of two get girls as young as 10 to show off for him on a webcam? By posing as a teenage lesbian. That’s what prosecutors allege Barry McCluskey did, targeting some 49 girls between 2007-10 through the Bebo social networking site and persuading them to engage in sex acts, while he sat comfortably in his Glasgow home. The male nurse then supposedly blackmailed them into doing more (and keeping quiet) by threatening show their families what they had done on cam.

McCluskey, who worked at an unnamed Glasgow hospital, prowled the Bebo social network site before contacting the children via the MSN instant messaging service. The former medic posed as a girl called ‘Clare’ or ‘Missy’. Police were alerted last February by a mother who discovered her 13-year-old daughter had been forced to carry out sex acts via a webcam. Police who went to search McCluskey’s house last July found he had gone to the Erskine Bridge, apparently contemplating suicide. He claimed he had ‘done something bad’ before he was eventually detained.

However, an investigation named ‘Operation Trinity’ discovered he had targeted dozens of girls, asking them to strip and perform as he recorded the footage. Alison Di Rollo, prosecuting, said he never made ‘face-to-face or physical contact’ with any of the girls. She added that he had initially complimented the girls, but soon displayed a ‘strong fetish’ for children wearing short outfits. One of his victims begged him to stop, saying she ‘hated’ what was being asked of her, the court heard. “Don’t blackmail me. I did it before because I thought I could trust you. Please don’t single me out and destroy my life over something stupid like a cam show,” the girl had told McCluskey.

And then there are the 10,000 child porn picture that were found on his computer, including “a pre-pubescent child locked up in a dog kennel.” Monsters Inc.