MAN JAILED FOR POSING AS TEENAGE GIRL TO GROOM CHILDREN ONLINE
A man from Newhaven was sentenced to prison after he impersonated a teenage girl on social media to groom multiple young girls.Mikey Winchester, aged 25 and residing on Gibbon Road in Newhaven, targeted three minors two aged ten and one aged 13 using Snapchat and Instagram during 2022 and 2023.
Sussex Police became aware of Winchester’s activities in May 2023 through reports from another police agency.
The reports involved two ten-year-old girls who had been approached by a Snapchat account under the name ‘avadunn2.0’.
This account was later identified as Winchester pretending to be a 13-year-old girl named ‘Ava’.
Winchester sent explicit images to both girls and asked them to send similarly explicit pictures of themselves, despite the girls clearly stating they were young children.
The messages were found on the girls’ phones, and investigators traced the Snapchat account back to Winchester’s residence in Newhaven.
On May 18, 2023, police officers executed a search at his home, arrested him, and seized multiple digital devices.
In August 2023, another police investigation uncovered a separate case involving a 13-year-old girl groomed on Instagram by a fake account called ‘dumbphoebelol’.
Winchester was again identified as the user behind the account, which was used to send explicit images and coerce the victim into sending images back.
Both social media profiles were linked to Winchester’s devices, which also contained 69 images of child sex abuse and four images of extreme animal pornography.
He faced charges including three counts of engaging in sexual communication with a child, inciting sexual activity with a minor (with and without penetration), three counts of producing indecent images of a child across different categories, and four counts of possessing extreme pornography.
At Lewes Crown Court on December 17, 2025, Winchester admitted all charges.
He was sentenced to four years in prison, placed under an indefinite Sexual Harm Prevention Order, and ordered to register as a sex offender.
