A PAEDOPHILE who "ruthlessly" pursued schoolgirls on Facebook met his match when he crossed paths with a Hull detective determined to get justice for victims as young as ten.
Nicholas Bull, 32, was sentenced to nine-and-a-half years in May 2011 for grooming a 12-year-old girl on Facebook and then raping her.
Detective Constable Brian Christie, of Humberside Police's protecting vulnerable people unit, suspected at the time that many more young girls had fallen prey to Bull's web of lies.
Bull has now been handed a five-year extension to his jail term after admitting a total of 23 sexual offences against 13 girls.
One of the victims was just ten years old.
Speaking outside Hull Crown Court, Det Con Christie said more than three years of painstaking work had paid off.
"I knew there would be more victims," he said. "It was quite clear when we retrieved evidence from his phone and computer that there were further victims.
"We were determined to identify as many victims as possible and get justice for them."
Det Con Christie said police had recovered a damning video showing Bull and one of his victims, a 14-year-old girl, having sex on the floor of a Hilton hotel room.
He said: "The information this victim gave us enabled us to go to the hotel and identify, from features in the room, the exact room where the offence occurred."
Det Con Christie commended the victims and their families for their bravery during the investigation.
"These were all vulnerable victims," he said. "It must have been very traumatic for us to have turned up on their doorsteps and asked them to describe what this person had done to them.
"We had to ask them to relive what had happened to them two or three years earlier. That was hard.
"I would like to thank these girls, and their parents, who were willing, if Bull had pleaded not guilty, to come to court."
Even now, Det Con Christies believes there may be dozens more victims of Bull.
"The indictment showed 13 victims," he said. "The average age of the girls was 12.
"But the evidence suggests there were, in fact, dozens of victims and it is my belief that this 14-year-old girl was not the only young female Bull met and offended, physically, against.
"We believe there are at least another two victims he met."
Tony Kelbrick, defending Bull, said his client had "some victim empathy".
He added that wheelchair-bound Bull, who is obese, had recently spent several hours on the floor of his cell after he had fallen out of bed and officers were unwilling to attempt to lift him without adequate support and a hoist.
DC Christie said attempts by Bull to gain sympathy from his disability should be seen in context.
"Most of the offences took place when he was able-bodied," he said.
Anyone with information should call Humberside Police on 101.
