'DEVIOUS' SOUTH ESSEX SNAPCHAT BLACKMAILER THREATENED TO RAPE TEENAGE GIRLS BRANDED DANGEROUS AND JAILED
A Snapchat blackmailer from south Essex who threatened to rape two teenage girls if they didn’t send him intimate images has been jailed.The blackmailer, who used the Snapchat name ‘Alfie Bach’, was unmasked by police as Canvey man Leo Gravely.
At Southend Crown Court on Friday (March 20), one of the two known victims said she feared Gravely may have targeted even more girls.
When police raided his home, they found a Category A indecent image on his phone of an unknown girl, whose age was estimated to be around 13 or 14.
Prosecutor Nicola May told Southend Crown Court Gravely – now 21, of St Michaels Road – had befriended his first victim in real life and set himself up as a “confidante”.
He used his intimate knowledge of her life to pretend under his Alfie Bach pseudonym – also calling himself Alfie Bachfield – that he was stalking her.
When the girl turned to Gravely for advice, he urged her to comply with the blackmailer’s demands, warning: “You don’t know what he’s capable of.” Judge Peter Clark called the breach of trust “grotesque”, “devious” and “utterly cynical”.
“ I have been attending the crown court for half a century and practicing in the crown court since long before you, Mr Gravely, or your victims were born – and in all that time, this is the most shocking and troubling case that I can recall,” he said.
Gravely appeared at Southend Crown on Friday to be sentenced for two charges of blackmail and two of making indecent images of children.
He was caught after he tried to prey on a second girl, threatening to drag her into a bush and rape her.
In an effort to intimidate that girl into complying with his demands, he boasted of the control he had over his first victim, bragging: “She’s in deep.” But when he sent the second victim his first victim’s Snapchat details as proof, the girls began communicating with one another.
Within weeks, he had been reported to Essex Police.
When police seized his phone, it contained search terms showing he was "somebody with an interest in scat pornography – that is, somebody with an interest in seeing people defecating or urinating,” said Mrs May.
He also had “an interest in females farting”.
His phone contained category C indecent images of his first victim, but Gravely – who has learning difficulties and autism – continued to protest his interest both during and after his trial at Basildon Crown Court last September.
“ You have sat in the dock this morning shaking your head,” Recorder Clark told Gravely on Friday.
“ You have shown no shred of remorse for me to take into account.
You are completely in denial – and you being in denial reinforces my assessment that you are a dangerous young man.” The court heard how Gravely had first targeted a neurodivergent teenage girl, demanding she film herself defecating and urinating and threatening to rape her and her sister or murder her family members if she didn’t comply.
“ He knew the bus that she took into college, the college she went to.
He also knew details about all of her family members,” said Mrs May.
“She believed that she was being stalked, followed.” He told her he knew her every move, telling her: “You really are so dumb.
You don’t know that you can’t get rid of me.” Recorder Clark said the girl had found it “truly terrifying”.
In a victim impact statement read to the court, she described how her father had installed cameras and floodlights after she revealed the suspected stalking.
“ I was very paranoid that the suspect would turn up at night because he would make threats to turn up when I was asleep,” she wrote.
“ I would have regular nightmares where I would see the suspect at the end of my bed.
The figure would have no face.” When she learned it was somebody she considered a friend, she said, it was “completely shattering”.
The dreams continued but now it was Gravely at the end of her bed.
She found the recurring dream so frightening that it began to affect her sleep.
The second victim, who never sent Gravely any images, wrote that amid his threats, “I nearly got hit by two cars because I was constantly looking behind me, scared.
She would barricade herself indoors at night, she said, and “his threats of sexual violence often run through my head when I try to be intimate with partners.” “ I can never see myself feeling safe enough to walk next to bushes or woodlands,” she added.
"Leo is always in my brain.
I'm always thinking, what if it wasn't just me and her?" Judge Peter Clark sentenced Gravely to seven years in prison, saying his offences demonstrated “deep depravity”.
He will be forced to sign the sex offenders register for ten years, be subject to a lifelong Sexual Harm Prevention Order and has been banned for life from contacting either victim or going anywhere he believes either might live or work.
