Man torments girlfriend on FB, gets jailed

LONDON, UK: A man in Britain, who befooled his 21-year-old girl friend to perform sexual acts online by creating his fake identities on Facebook, has been jailed for seven years.

Darrell Bingham, 49, posed as an American football player on the social networking site and subjected her to a twisted six-month campaign of sexual abuse, the Sun reported.

He threatened to send topless pictures of this girl to her work colleagues if she disobeyed. She was forced to perform sex acts on herself day and night on a webcam.

Posing as "Grant" on Facebook, Bingham pestered the girl to send him a topless picture of herself. She complied naively. Later, he started blackmailing her into amusing him online.

When she confided in Bingham, being her boy friend, about the blackmail threats, he told her to "carry on" by saying that it might "soon be over".

One day he told her that he had killed "Grant". He even showed some fake photographs to prove it.

Weeks later, the girl was again approached through Facebook by Bingham, this time posing as "Chad", a friend of slain Grant. He continued to blackmail her, claiming that Grant had shared her images with him.

Six months after her ordeal started, the girl broke down in tears at her workplace. Her colleagues immediately called the police, who traced the online exchanges back to Bingham.

She said: "I feel betrayed and heartbroken. When I found out it was Darrell (Bingham) I was absolutely devastated. He was the only person I could turn to."