Former UK police informer convicted of 38 paedophile offences jailed for life | Crime
A “dangerous” pedophile who spied on environmental and animal rights activists as a police informant has been sentenced to life in prison.
Nick Gratwick was convicted of 38 charges of pedophilia in the UK and abroad, including raping children as young as six.
Jailing him on Friday, Judge Harden-Frost described his crime as “completely depraved, manipulative and nightmarish”.
The 68-year-old, from Mitcham, south London, had exchanged hundreds of coded messages with other abusers.
Between 2023 and 2025, he arranged to pay a Romanian mother to allow him to rape her 10-year-old daughter, discussed harming children for sexual pleasure, and advised others on how to drug and abuse children.
was caught With over 1,300 photos and videos abuse of children.
The judge said he could not apply for parole for 19 years, adding that he was a “dangerous” pedophile who had not pleaded guilty.
His trial revealed that he was a police informant who spied on environmental and animal rights groups in the 1990s and 2000s.
For six years, Gratwick posed as an activist but secretly passed information on campaigners to the police.
One of the protests he infiltrated was the high-profile campaign to prevent the destruction of thousands of trees on an ancient site to pave the way for the construction of a nine-mile ring road around Newbury, Berkshire.
Protests in the 1990s led many activists to set up 30 camps along the planned route, erecting treehouses, digging tunnels and climbing trees to disrupt road construction.
Activists told the Guardian that Gratwick played a key role in organizing the protests. This apparently enabled him to collect information on campaigners to pass on to the police.
He helped oversee the purchase and distribution of equipment such as ropes and harnesses.
The radio engineer also helped set up a CB radio network so that activists camped at different points along the planned route could warn each other of possible police movements. He was nicknamed “Radio Nick”.
Police we explained before In an apparently unprecedented move, they paid a private security company to infiltrate Newbury campaigners. They believed this was necessary as the cost of policing the protest increased.
The private security firm is also understood to have hired Gratwick to spy on protesters. Thames Valley police, who are overseeing the protests, declined to comment.
Gratwick had also infiltrated animal rights groups, including campaigning to close a laboratory run by a commercial firm called Huntingdon Life Sciences.
Gratwick, whose full name is Edward Nicholas Gratwick, hinted at his previous undercover role in interviews with the National Crime Agency following his arrest on pedophilia charges last March.
His employment as an informant was later confirmed at his six-week trial at Guildford crown court in Surrey.
Court documents explained: “The records were recorded during the eight-year period between 1995 and 2003. [Gratwick] In total, he gave information to police for about six years. “He gave information on animal rights and environmental issues.”
The suspect was arrested at Stansted airport as he was about to fly to Bucharest to rape the 10-year-old girl.
The jury rejected the allegation that he created a false identity to gain favor with pedophiles and gather information that would help convict them. The judge said the jury understood his argument and “unmasked” him.
