STRUGGLING for money and coming out of a bad break up, Hayley joined a sugar daddy website where rich men pay women for their company.
She thought it was a harmless bit of fun and couldn’t believe it when she was immediately contacted by a handsome American millionaire.
Channel 5Hayley fell victim to the evil online predator[/caption]
PAConvicted online predator Anthony Burns had hundreds of victims[/caption]
When the charming rich man offered Hayley $600 (£470) for a few intimate videos she thought it would be a way to solve her money issues.
But after their conversations were moved to WhatsApp, the online relationship took a darker, coercive turn.
Like countless others, Hayley had fallen victim to dangerous predator, Anthony “Danny” Burns.
Instead of a handsome millionaire, Burns was in fact a convicted child abuser, serial catfish and blackmailer who controlled and abused his victims through deception and threats.
Hayley quickly became trapped in a cycle of horrific degrading abuse and blackmail, fearing that Burns would expose her to family and friends.
Hayley told Channel 5 documentary Prime Suspect: Hunting the Predators: “I was working as a carer and I was absolutely desperate for money. My friend at the time just said, you know, ‘How about we go onto this sugar daddy website?’
“It’s a website that men with a lot of money go on and spoil younger women and they give you an allowance and that was the pitch that was given to me at the time.
“Burns said that he was a business owner in Malibu in America, worth millions and millions and I just kind of took that at face value again.
“The first message I received from him was, ‘If I give you $600, will you do these six videos?’ And I thought, well he’s not from around here so nothing bad is going to happen.”
Burns encouraged Hayley to move their conversation to WhatsApp – meaning that their messages would be encrypted and more difficult for law enforcement to trace – and asked her to provide ID to prove her age.
But as soon as he had that info his messages became more sexual and demanding.
“From the get-go it was very sexual, very domineering. He just said, ‘This is what I want and I want it now.’ I was nervous at first, sending that very first video.
“He was getting very, very manipulative, coercive. He was telling me to call him ‘Daddy’, he was telling me to do things that were completely out of my comfort zone.
“And as soon as I asked for the payment, he then started with the blackmail.
Channel 5Sophie was one of hundreds of women the convicted sex predator targeted[/caption]
“He would send me references of other women doing some videos and it was stuff from masturbation to urinating in my underwear and putting it in my mouth and worse. It was very intense very quickly.”
He told Hayley: “If you do not do this, you will be blackmailed. This is what I will do. I have found you on social media, I have found your family, your friends, your grandad, your brother, your sister.”
“He knew exactly who I was. That’s when the shock and realisation hit that this is not who he says he is; this is something more deviant.
“He knew my full name, he knew where I was located. I was petrified of him showing up to my address.”
Terrified Hayley agreed to Burn’s depraved demands out of pure fear.
On one occasion he got her to perform vile acts with a sex toy, while lying on the floor.
“I was on the floor in tears, absolutely in tears, and he was telling me to call him ‘Daddy’, telling me that this is what’s gonna happen when he rapes me.
“I just had to do it continuously for 45 minutes to an hour, just sobbing. (He was) telling me to do things and I just did them. I was under his control at that point.”
He would even message Hayley while she was at work demanding she go into the toilet and send him videos.
“He was threatening every single day, saying that he’d post it onto social media, he’ll send it out to people he knows,” she explains.
“Every video he wanted, every image he wanted, I couldn’t say no to it because I didn’t know what he was capable of. Just a sex slave to him I suppose.”
Channel 5Hayley with fellow victim Sophie in the new documentary[/caption]
Pushed to breaking point
Hayley eventually confided in a friend who urged her to go to the police.
But because Burns was buying phone numbers from America it made him impossible to trace and the case was closed.
However, time was soon to run out for Burns. The National Crime Agency were investigating serial offender Abdul Elahi, one of the most prolific online offenders the UK has ever seen.
PAAbdul Elahi a ‘sadistic’ paedophile who exploited and blackmailed almost 2,000 victims[/caption]
Steve Colman from the NCA explains: “Abdul Elahi had 2,000 victims and over a million images. It was identified that Elahi had been communicating with a UK suspect and we had the WhatsApp chat logs to support that.”
That person was Anthony “Danny” Burns. Elahi effectively coached Burns in how to groom and blackmail victims.
“Elahi would initially ask for just a normal picture, girl-next-door image type thing, then he would offer them money for topless images and then, for fully naked images,” Steve Colman explains. “Once he’d got those, he was then in a position to fully blackmail them.”
Elahi’s arrest led police to Burns. But in the initial interview he played the victim and alleged that Elahi was blackmailing him.
Burns was released on bail to his home address where he lived with his father and went his normal daily life where, despite already being a convicted sex offender, he had a job and a girlfriend.
National Crime Agencypersistent-devious-online-predator-blackmailed-977427328[/caption]
Channel 5NCA Senior Manager Robert Slater[/caption]
Twisted history
In 2010, he was convicted of grooming a 14-year-old girl and sentenced to 18 months imprisonment. And in 2013, he was sentenced to three years imprisonment for sexual activity with a child.
In February 2020, it came to police attention that Burns had a relationship with a woman who had children, which was a breach of his sexual harm prevention order.
Police now had his phone and found that he had been in touch with numerous women on different dating sites and was blackmailing them.
Detectives eventually uncovered Burns’ secret cloud account with over half a million images and videos of female and child sexual abuse.
It was evidence that he was a calculating blackmailer who recorded abuse for his own sexual gratification.
Steve Colman says: “He had hundreds and hundreds of mobile telephone numbers from the UK, US and Australia. They were saved as female names or derogatory remarks of a sexual nature.”
Police uncovered a staggering 297 female numbers on his phone and decided to contact them all to see if they too had been victims.
Channel 5Jane Lawrenson the NCA Lead Interviewing Officer[/caption]
“We were phoning people who had been victims of serious offences and in effect, re-victimising them, but there was no other way of doing it,” says Steve Colman.
“The responses we got was mixed. People would immediately hang up. Some would say, ‘Yes, they had been the victim but they didn’t want to engage with us.’ And some broke down and confirmed that they had been the victim of a crime and were willing to speak to us.”
Some of Burns’ victims were so traumatised that they contemplated taking their own lives, or couldn’t bear to set foot outside of their houses.
The documentary also heard from Sophie, who went to the police after being bombarded with sexually explicit pictures and messages despite never sending Burns an image or video.
She says she feared she would be murdered and felt “violated” in her own home by the stream of vile messages.
Eventually the police had 32 victims of blackmail, malicious communications or causing a child to engage in sexual activity.
Burns. from Lowestoft, Sussex, pleaded not guilty and tried to manipulate the course of justice by threatening to sack his legal team, feigning illness or refusing to turn up at court which police believe was an attempt to delay proceedings so his victims would give up.
But Hayley was one of the brave women who was willing to stand up in court and testify against Burns.
Steps to Keep Your Child Safe From Grooming
By Emma Kenny, true crime psychologist and parenting expert
Encourage your child to share their day-to-day experiences. Ask who they talked to on the way home, what happened at the bus stop, and if anything made them feel uncomfortable. The more openly you talk, the more confident they’ll be to speak up if something feels off.
If possible, arrange for your child to walk or travel with friends. Identify safe spaces along the route, trusted neighbours or shops where they can go if they feel threatened.
Groomers often switch to online contact once they’ve made initial in-person connections. Monitor your child’s digital devices in a respectful but proactive way. Agree on ground rules for social media use, and encourage them to show you anything that makes them feel uneasy.
If your parental alarm bells are going off, do not dismiss those feelings. Challenge unusual behaviour or new relationships gently but firmly. Seek professional advice if you suspect your child is at risk.
If you have any evidence or strong suspicions that someone is grooming your child, contact the police immediately. Support and guidance from organisations like the NSPCC or Barnardo’s can also be invaluable in helping you navigate this distressing situation.
Sickest charge
Eventually, in August 2023, he pleaded guilty to 44 out of 46 charges. He pleaded not guilty to the most serious one which was inciting the sexual activity with a child, after encouraging a woman to sexually abuse her own daughter on camera while he screen-recorded it.
He was found guilty on all 46 charges and jailed for 24 years.
Hayley went to court to see her abuser in person for the first time.
She says: “That was the first day I saw him, his face, just him. That was him, that was the person that took everything away from me.
Channel 5 Sophie was a victim of Burns’ evil crimes[/caption]
“We showed him that we regained that power from him. So in a sense, it was frightening but we took something back from him that he took from us.
“It was a brutal experience because I’d had to go through everything several times over. But he’s gone now. He’s in prison and that’s where he belongs. Still to this day I don’t know if any of the material’s gone anywhere.
“You know, I’ve been told it hasn’t, it’s on a hard drive that belonged to him and on his iCloud. But you don’t know if they’ve sent them to anyone else.
“As much as people say, ‘Just forget about it’ you can’t just forget about these things. It just doesn’t happen.”
Prime Suspect: Hunting the Predators Wednesday at 9pm on Channel 5.
Published: [#item_custom_pubDate]
