OnlyFans model, 20, weeps in court as she faces child porn charges

An OnlyFans model who created and distributed pornographic content with an underage teenage girl dissolved into tears as the gravity of her offence was brought home in court.

Ellie Rixon, a 20-year-old from Sefton, was told she could face a six-year prison sentence after creating photographs and videos of a 16-year-old girl ‘taken with her consent, despite her being incapable of consenting because of her age’. 

But after breaking down in the dock, Rixon will be allowed to walk free after she was given a two-year suspended sentence.

The content, created over a seven-month period during which the girl turned 17, was sold on WhatsApp by Rixon, with the pair agreeing to ‘share the proceeds generated between them’, Liverpool crown court heard.

Having initially believed the girl was 18, Rixon learned the truth about five months into the arrangement, but ‘continued to create content with her’.

The victim subsequently informed Merseyside Police that Rixon, who turned 19 during the period of the agreement, ‘had numerous indecent photographs and videos of her’ and was ‘selling and posting them online’.

Following Rixon’s arrest last August, police found she had taken 43 category A indecent images – the most serious – of the girl, together with 11 in category B and 119 in category C. Of these, seven, two and 25 respectively had been distributed. 

Outlining Sentencing Council guidelines for the production of category A indecent images of children, prosecutor Joanne Daniels said the starting point was six years, with a range of four to nine years.

‘The defendant creates pornographic content which she sells online on social media and OnlyFans,’ said Ms Daniels. 

‘The defendant would record her performing acts or being naked and post this online. [The girl] asked the defendant to take them down, but the defendant refused. 

‘The distribution can only be evidenced on WhatsApp and not on OnlyFans.’  

Rixon, who has no previous convictions, spent a period in custody at Styal prison in Wilmslow, Cheshire, after breaching her bail conditions.

She was said to have produced the content in order to fund a drug habit.

Initial mention of a possible six-year sentence drew a distressed response from a woman in the public galley, before Judge Neil Flewitt KC intervened.

‘Just calm down a moment,’ said the judge. ‘She is not getting a sentence anything like that.’

A lawyer for Rixon, who admitted three counts of production of indecent images of a child and three charges of distribution of indecent images, said time behind bars had led to a ‘difference in her attitude and behaviour’. 

‘If there is any such thing as a standard type case, this certainly is not it,’ defence counsel Lloyd Morgan told the court.

‘Your honour will have seen the trauma she has suffered. She herself has been very vulnerable. These are two vulnerable girls, both agreeing for them to be distributed for some financial gain.’

Handing Rixon a two-year suspended sentence, Judge Flewitt said: ‘Even though [the girl] did consent, what happened was still unlawful. I accept that, when it started, you did not realise her age, but you continued after you did find out how old she was.

‘I am equally satisfied that you did not make very much money from this. The overwhelming likelihood is that you were being exploited, both of you, by somebody else, but it is not clear who that is. While you had an OnlyFans account, it is accepted that none of these images were distributed through that particular forum.

‘This is, therefore, a particularly unusual case of its type. Everything that was done was done with the consent of the person shown in these images, but, because of her vulnerability, she was entitled to the protection of the law.

‘If you did not realise before how serious this is, you will have realised when the prosecution counsel took me through the sentencing guidelines.

‘I do not think that appropriate punishment can only be achieved by immediate custody. For those reasons, I am going to suspend this sentence. The object is to help you. I am quite satisfied that, after hard reflect in custody, you are now willing to engage in the support offered to you.

‘You have had, in my judgement, sufficient punishment by the time you have already spent in custody. I hope that has caused you to think about the life you were leading and where it will take you if you carry on leading that sort of life, and to think about taking the support being offered to you.’

Rixon was also given a 12-month drug rehabilitation requirement and a rehabilitation activity requirement of up to 30 days. She will be required to sign the sex offenders’ register for the next 10 years and was handed a sexual harm prevention order lasting the same period.

The judge also ordered that Rixon be deprived of her mobile phone and a GoPro camera.