A SOCIAL media predator tried to get a 15-year-old girl to send him inappropriate pictures after inventing a imaginary friend who sent her threatening messages.

Michael Kiddle of Okehampton told the girl he had given his old mobile phone to a friend called Jake Jarvis and she exchanged texts with him without realising it was actually Kiddle.

He carried on the deception for more than a year, during which time he set up a ‘good guy, bad guy’ routine in which Jake sent nasty messages and Kiddle sent nice ones.

The imaginary Jake threatened to kill himself unless the girl sent him explicit pictures while Kiddle posed as a shoulder to cry on when she got depressed and frightened by the pressure.

In the end the girl went to the police to report the online harassment from Jake without realising that all his messages had all been come from Kiddle himself.

She was left needing counselling and medication by the strain of trying to fend off the messages on Twitter and other social media outlets, Exeter Crown Court was told.

Transport cafe cook Kiddle, aged 25, admitted two counts of communicating messages of an offensive or indecent nature by Twitter and on a mobile phone.

He was jailed for 12 months, suspended for two years, and ordered to do 20 days of rehabilitation activities by Judge Geoffrey Mercer, QC.

Judge Mercer told him: ‘Your contact with this girl was very contrived and very calculated and carried out over a period of time. There was manipulation and deceiving of this young girl in a way which beggars belief.’

Mr Joss Ticehurst, prosecuting, said Kiddle met the girl in an online forum where they started off chatting about football before becoming friends and exchanging other messages.

She was 14 when the first contact was made but 15 by the time Kiddle sent the offensive messages under the false persona of Jake in October 2015.

Mr Ticehurst said: ‘He exploited her vulnerability in the way he manipulated her through the dual personality. He caused this young girl huge distress and she needed counselling and medication as a result.’

Mary McCarthy, defending, said Kiddle was immature for his age but now realised that what he did was very wrong.

She said: ‘He is not emotionally developed at all and did not appreciate the depths to which he brought the complainant.’