A soldier in the Household Cavalry, Graham Jarvis, has been jailed for 12 years after arranging online to travel from his London barracks to Wales to rape a seven-year-old girl and a ten-month-old baby. Jarvis believed he was messaging the children's mother, but was in fact communicating with an undercover police officer, and the case highlights the effectiveness of covert policing in intercepting child sexual abuse plots before they can be carried out. Judge Adam Hiddleston described Jarvis as "cold and calculated", telling him he was a paedophile who viewed children as objects and genuinely believed at the time that the children were real.

Jarvis, 38, was arrested at his Knightsbridge barracks in January 2024 after police identified him as the user of the accounts involved, and was convicted following a four-day trial at Southwark Crown Court. He has since been dismissed from the Armed Forces by the Ministry of Defence, and was previously court-martialled in 2009 for tendering counterfeit currency. Alongside his 12-year sentence, he will serve a further two years on licence, remains subject to a sexual harm prevention order and sex offender notification requirements for life, and was convicted on two counts of arranging to commit a child sex offence.