A royal police officer is facing jail after he was found to have posed online as a 17-year-old girl and possessed more than 1,000 indecent images.
PC Adam Cox, 31, was working in Parliamentary and Diplomatic Protection when he created an alter ego by the name of Emily Whitehouse, where he then exchanged explicit messages with other men online.
When he was asked to send sexually explicit photographs, Cox found images online of a Canadian woman named Alicia Fuller who had killed herself aged 21 which he then claimed was 'Emily'.
Cox's home was raided and police found chat logs and internet searches for 'pre-teens' on his computer.
He told police: 'I'm not hoarding images. I have never meant to hurt anyone. I'm not a collector. I've not got a secret stash.'
Yet police found 1,691 indecent and extreme images, including one featuring an infant and others showing children as young as seven.
Cox, from Windsor, pleaded guilty to four counts of possession of indecent images - 645 of the most serious category A pictures, 201 category B, 449 category C, and 396 extreme pornographic images of bestiality.
He has denied encouraging three men to attempt to illicit indecent images from 'Emily' and the charges were ordered to lie on file. Prosecutor Charles Falk said: 'This may very well be an abuse of trust because he is a police officer.
'His role is security for embassies, parliament and the royal family.'
The court heard how Cox had expressed 'intense remorse' and faced losing his job due to the case.
He said: 'He is a man who finds it extremely difficult to articulate his motivation and one can quite understand that because the context is extremely unusual conduct, one might think.'
Cox was in the Old Bailey alongside Harry Gibbs, 32, of Stevenage, Hertfordshire, Andrew Monk, 39, of Kettering, Northamptonshire, and Ajai Shridhar, 46, of Ealing, west London.
All three men admitted to talking to 'Emily' and attempting to possess indecent images of children.
Monk had pestered 'Emily' for images, particularly ones involving high heels, and sent her sexually explicit questions such as 'Are you a moaner or a screamer?'
He was given a 12-month community order by Judge Dennis, who said: 'Over two months you were engaged in online chat with a co-defendant who you now know as Adam Cox but who pretended to be a 17-year-old female.
'Over that two-month period as discussions went on you were making repeated requests to see images of the person you were speaking with who you thought was called Emily.
'In total you received five category C images and one category B of her, she being a teenager now sadly deceased from abroad, but images that Mr Cox had obtained online to carry out his fantasy of speaking to people such as yourself pretending he was a 17-year-old female in online chat. Gibbs, a supply teacher, talked to 'Emily' between July and September 2015, and even though she was under 18, he tried to coax her into logging onto 'Chaturbate' - a chat and masturbate website.
He told her she had 'real model quality' and sex was 'always big business'.
Gibbs was given a 12-month order and told by a judge: 'Fantasy or otherwise, it is of great concern to the court as to the risks you may pose for others.'
Shridhar asked 'Emily' for photos to 'cheer' him up as he chatted with her on Skype in February and March last year. He appeared keen to see her underwear and told her: 'Naughty of me to ask, but have you got any pics where you have to wear your school uniform?'
Cox has been made subject to a sexual harm prevention order and will be sentenced next Friday with Shridhar.
He was suspended from duty on August 2 2016 following his arrest by Hertfordshire Constabulary.
The Met's Directorate of Professional Standards (DPS) will conduct a misconduct review once criminal proceedings are complete.
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