SEXTING by children as young as eight is a growing problem, says North Wales Police and Crime Commissioner Arfon Jones.

Mr Jones says he has heard that youngsters sending and receiving sexually explicit messages via apps like Snapchat or Instagram on their mobile phones is a growing problem.

The crime commissioner, a former police inspector from Harlech, was also told there’s evidence the youngsters are being targeted by online paedophiles seeking to groom them.

The news was revealed to Mr Jones during a briefing at the Victim Help Centre in St Asaph.

Victim help officer Karen Reed said: “We’ve had some cases of children who have experienced sexting who are under 10-years-old, as young as eight or nine years old.

“It doesn’t seem to discriminate between boys or girls really.

“Young people have access to mobile phones from a very young age, and especially now, a time like summer holidays when children are out and about playing with their friends.

“The children will send photographs of various pictures to each other.

“They’ll be pornographic, explicit photographs – sometimes of themselves, sometimes they’re sharing photographs that have maybe been passed on to them from various sources.

“I think it would be very difficult to say that there are many children now who haven’t been touched by this type of crime. That’s my experience of it here anyway."

See this week’s north editions for the full story, in shops and online on Thursday