A MAN from the North-East was yesterday jailed for life for his involvement in a paedophile ring that recruited young girls to provide sex for cash.

The judge described the four men involved - who also used graffiti adverts on trains asking girls as young as eight for sex - as "morally abhorrent and wicked".

They were brought to justice with the help of journalist Ruth Lumley, 26, who noticed graffiti urging girls aged eight to 13 to text a mobile phone number as she was travelling home from work.

Posing as an 11-year-old girl, Miss Lumley, who worked on the Chichester Observer, in West Sussex at the time, replied and was sent a series of increasingly sexually explicit messages.

She alerted police and it prompted a ten-month nationwide investigation that uncovered "horrific" child abuse on eight victims and led detectives to Trevor Haddock, 55, Ian Jones, 43, John Farmer, 68, and Derek Moody, 43.

The four pleaded guilty to a range of sex offences at Hove Crown Court earlier this month and yesterday they were all jailed.

The court heard how a British Transport Police officer pretended to be a 12-year-old girl and arranged to meet a man outside a Burger King, in Brighton.

Police lay in wait and arrested Jones. After officers searched his flat and checked his phone records, they discovered calls to Farmer.

Farmer was arrested when police found child abuse pictures on his phone. Two pictures found on Jones' phone were taken in his flat and included an image of a third man later identified as Haddock.

His home was raided and his phone records led to the uncovering of a plan by Haddock to take a young girl to Newcastle so she could be abused by the fourth defendant, Moody, in exchange for cash.

Ringleader Haddock, of Ambleside, Worcester, admitted 14 offences including rape, attempted rape, conspiring to rape and sexual assault.

Jones, of Rowlands Road, Worthing, West Sussex, admitted conspiring to sexually assault a child, attempting to cause or incite a child to engage in sexual activity and four counts of criminal damage with intent to commit a sexual offence.

Farmer, of Pevensey, East Sussex, admitted arranging or facilitating the commission of a child sex offence and Moody, of West Midland Road, Newcastle, admitted inciting to rape a young girl.

Judge Anthony Niblett sentenced Haddock to six life sentences, and said he would not be eligible for parole until after at least 12 years.

Jones received a life term, with a minimum tariff of ten years, Farmer was jailed for eight years and Moody was handed a life term with a minimum of four years in jail.