A London court has handed prison terms to two young men after finding them guilty of pushing two teenage girls into extreme self-harm, marking one of the first convictions of its kind under the UK’s Online Safety Act 2023.
The court was told that the pair targeted vulnerable girls on the internet and encouraged them to injure themselves in ways meant to leave lasting marks.
Charlie Johnson, 24, and Prince Singh, 23, were found to have pressured the girls, aged 16 and 17, into carving their names onto their bodies and later shared the photos in a Discord chatroom.
Prosecutors at Woolwich Crown Court said one of the girls used the blade from a pencil sharpener to cut one of the men’s names into her skin.
Jonathan Mole from the Crown Prosecution Service said the actions went far beyond minor scratching and were designed to cause “permanent scarring” and long-term harm. The court heard that the trauma still affects the girls, with one telling the court she continues to relive the ordeal.
"It's like he built a cage inside me that I'm still trying to escape," she said. "I cannot process why he was proud of the things he did, things that have left me scarred."
The CPS noted that the case is believed to be the first jury conviction for encouraging serious self-harm under the Online Safety Act. During the October trial, Johnson was also found guilty of assaulting the girls when they later met in person.
Judge Ruth Downing described the offences as grave and the victims as “vulnerable”. She sentenced Johnson to four years in prison and Singh to two years and nine months.
She explained that Singh received a shorter term partly because he was found guilty of encouraging self-harm involving only one girl and also entered a late guilty plea.
"I think both these men took a deeply unhealthy interest in this idea of encouraging these women to self-harm,” the judge said, calling the acts “serious offences” committed in 2024.
The court was told the two men were friends both online and in person and had worked in finance.
A CPS statement said, “Johnson and Singh encouraged their victims to self-harm for their own sexual gratification – and displayed several examples of controlling or coercive behaviour that made the victims feel they had no choice but to comply with their requests.”
Both were also convicted of taking and distributing indecent images of a child, with those sentences running at the same time as the main ones.
Judge Downing noted that the court had “struggled a bit” to determine punishment for what she described as a “novel case”.
The CPS also recalled that earlier in the year, Tyler Webb became the first person charged under the same offence.
Webb pleaded guilty and received a prison term of more than nine years for encouraging a vulnerable woman to self-harm and attempt suicide through the Telegram app.
