An East London child rapist accused of getting underage boys to do sex acts on a social media app said intercourse with 12-year-olds was the ‘best sex ever’ in a message to a mystery male, a court has heard. Barthimaus Ehiemere, 24, appeared before a jury at Snaresbrook Crown Court on Tuesday (July 29) charged with multiple child sex offences as the barristers made their closing speeches.
Before the trial, Ehiemere pleaded guilty to 32 sex offences, including four counts of raping a child under 13 and a range of offences for running a social media channel where he encouraged boys to send indecent images. Jurors also know he received a suspended sentence and sexual harm prevention order (SHPO) from Wood Green Crown Court for possessing indecent images in 2021.
Ehiemere denies the remaining 16 counts, which include sexual communication with a child, inciting a child into sexual activity, paying for the sexual services of a child, and rape of a child under 13. Ehiemere and his defence team argue the underage boys lied about their age, that any payments made to a consenting teenager were not for sex, and the rape allegations are made-up.
‘You may want to think about his relationship with the truth’
On Ehiemere’s claim the complainants concealed their true ages, prosecutor James Brown KC told the jury: “It’s a fact. There’s no trace at all, in any available material, of the defendant checking to see if the boys were 16 or over.”
Mr Brown also suggested Ehiemere only admitted the rapes of a child under 13, and the making indecent images and breach of a SHPO offences, because police had discovered digital evidence of them all on his devices. “He simply had no option but to plead guilty,” said the barrister.
Where police could find no incontrovertible evidence in relation to other alleged offences, Mr Brown asked jurors to consider Ehiemere’s use of message deletion, iCloud storage, and DropBox links. “You may want to think about his relationship with the truth and his credibility,” added the prosecutor.
During the trial, jurors heard Ehiemere, then aged 19, contacted boys using the ‘Spotafriend’ social media app, where he would share pornography and indecent images with them and ask them to return their own videos replicating the sex acts.
In all cases, the prosecution argued the boys made their age clear, and in one case their young age was ‘perfectly apparent’ from their photos. But Ehiemere denies eight charges, which include sexual communication with a child and inciting a child into sexual activity, disputing whether the boys had been frank about their true age.
Ehiemere also admitted giving money to, and having sexual relations with, a 16-year-old boy, but denied the offence of paying for the sexual services of a child. Ehiemere claimed he gave the boy money ‘to help with his savings’. The prosecution asked jurors to consider Ehiemere’s message to the boy: “Would you do it [have sex with me] without money?”.
‘It looked like he had a ring of people’
Another boy, aged 12 at the time, accused Ehiemere of raping him in Surrey woodland after meeting him online. Jurors have been told children under the age of 13 cannot consent to sex in law.
In his summing up, Judge Timothy Greene reminded jurors of the boy’s evidence that ‘Bart’ had made him ‘feel special’ at a time when he was being bullied at school, and that he portrayed himself as a trombonist with a camel business in Dubai. “He offered me money to have sex with him,” the boy claimed, “He said he usually gives £50, but it was the first time so he gave me £20.”
The complainant alleged Ehiemere tried to penetrate him over the branch of a tree, but stopped when he ‘screamed out’ in pain. They then performed other sex acts on each other, claimed the boy. Ehiemere denied anything happened at all, and that he refused to have sex with the boy once he realised he was too young.
After the alleged intercourse, the complainant told jurors Ehiemere handed him money and filmed the payment for his Snapchat account, later posting a video of the handover alongside a ‘review’ of their sexual encounter.
“Looking back now it looked like he had a ring of people he was doing these things with and having sex with,” said the boy.
The pair remained in contact for two years after the incident, but the boy blocked Ehiemere when he told him he had been arrested for the offences that were sentenced in 2021, the court heard. Some time later, the boy told his parents but felt it would be pointless to go to the police because he could not confirm Ehiemere’s identity, jurors heard.
‘Set aside any revulsion’
During cross examination of the boy, Ehiemere’s defence barrister Barry Kogan accused the boy of making the allegations ‘in revenge’ after Ehiemere refused to have sex with him. When Mr Kogan suggested: “You have never forgiven him,” the boy replied: “I have never forgiven him for raping me.”
In his closing speech, Mr Kogan accused the 12-year-old of ‘pretending’ he was abused after being ‘let down very badly’ when Ehiemere refused him sex. On the boy’s claim Ehiemere filmed the incident, the barrister asked: “Where’s the footage?”
Mr Kogan also reminded jurors the boy had asked for £800 or he would tell the police. “It’s evidence of a rather nasty streak in that 13-year-old’s character and unusual personality for his age… a fixation with money,” he said.
In relation to the guilty plea counts, Mr Kogan said Ehiemere had already accepted sexual communication and inciting the children to perform sex acts, but this was to ‘increase the membership of his [social media] channel’.
“It was a financial plan,” Mr Kogan claimed, later telling jurors: “Set aside any revulsion and contempt for setting up this channel.”
‘No more than sexual imagination’
On the 12-year-old boy, of whom Ehiemere has already admitted rape of a child under 13, Mr Kogan said there was evidence of the boy deceiving Redditors by joining 18+ messaging boards and pretending he had a job, with reference to pay cheques, petrol costs, and time off. “He was going to great lengths to conceal his true age to other men,” said the defence counsel.
During the trial, jurors also heard about a 2023 message from Ehiemere to an unknown male, describing his meeting with two 12-year-olds as the ‘best sex ever’. Mr Kogan dismissed this as ‘no more than sexual imagination’.
The judge told jurors it was a ‘notable feature of the case’ not one of the boys went to the police themselves, rather it was the police who identified them after finding images of them on Ehiemere’s phone.
The jury are expected to retire on Wednesday afternoon (July 30) after Judge Greene has finished summing up the case.
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