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A survivor of the London Bridge attack who was hailed as a hero for stopping another suspected terrorist incident has been unmasked as a paedophile.

John Lennon has been locked up after he was caught sending child rape videos to undercover police officers on the dark web and boasted of having sex with toddlers.

The former army vet also wrote sick fantasies about raping Madeleine McCann and Alesha MacPhail, six, who was murdered in Scotland two years ago.

A judge at Exeter Crown Court jailed Lennon for five years after he admitted three counts of making and three of distributing indecent images of children and described the defendant as "depraved".

The 48-year-old, of Torquay, Devon, was put on the sex offenders register for life and made subject to an Indefinite Sexual Harm Prevention Order.

(Image: PA)

Lennon told the undercover officer, who was posing as a fellow paedophile, that he loved reading reports about the murder of little Alesha.

He sent a total of 29 videos or stills showing abuse and wrote horrific messages around the missing Madeline McCann between June and November last year.

His conviction capped a remarkable fall from grace for Lennon, who had won plaudits for his actions for jumping in a moving van to stop a driver who had run over a cyclist and was dragging him down the road.

At the time Lennon feared he was in the middle of another terrorist incident when he saw the van moving with a cyclist underneath.

He had been on London Bridge back in 2017 when a van was driven into a crowd of people, killing eight people.

(Image: PA Archive/PA Images)

In August the following year Lennon the passenger door open and grabbed the steering wheel to stop the rental van from heading towards a crowd of people.

He then dragged the driver’s feet off the brake and accelerator, and dodged punches from the man as he grappled for the handbrake.

The cyclist, a Deliveroo driver, was trapped beneath the wheel of a van with a tyre crushing his neck.

Lennon then co-ordinated the crowd to push the vehicle back up the hill to save the life of the cyclist.

He had been sitting outside a restaurant on Queens Road, Bristol, when the horror crash happened close to the Wills Memorial Building, an iconic part of the city’s university.

At the time he said: “I was on London Bridge and I initially thought ‘f*** me, this is a terrorist attack’.

“Up ahead I could see there was a big crowd of people all around the front of the Wills Memorial Building, and I thought ‘maybe he’s going for them’.

(Image: AFP/Getty Images)

“While I was running, the front wheels went over the kid and the bike.

“The driver still didn’t stop.

“I grabbed the side door screaming at him to stop. I jumped into the passenger seat and then he looked at me.

“I thought ‘he’s going to crash’. I can see all these people ahead, so I held the steering wheel straight to keep the van on the road.

“He started hitting me, back-handing me. I started to look for the keys, I couldn’t see where the handbrake was."

Lennon grabbed down at the driver's feet, removed them from the peddles and flicked the gear stick into neutral.

He managed to put the handbrake on, and added: “The attackers on London Bridge had knives strapped to their arms when they were in the van, and I was looking to see if he had weapons.

“I suddenly thought ‘being in this van, this isn’t a very good idea’, so I jumped out and went to see the guy under the van."

No action was taken against the driver of the van.