A 22-year-old man has been jailed for 10 years by the High Court after pleading guilty to 12 offences involving girls. The sentencing judge referred to one girl in the case who died by suicide and described the grief suffered by her family, particularly her mother, as beyond words.
The offences spanned June 2022 to September 2023. Court accounts identify four girls as direct complainants, aged 14 or 15 at the time, and five other girls depicted in child sexual imagery. The admitted offences included attempted rape, indecent assaults and attempted unlawful sexual intercourse.
In one case, the judge said the man indecently assaulted a girl on a bus. After she forgave him, he took her to a hotel and attempted to rape her. The judge said the attempted rape differed little in seriousness from a completed rape.
The judge said the man had deliberately targeted young girls and showed little remorse or respect for them. Some of the sentences were ordered to run consecutively, and the 10-year total reflected a reduction for his guilty pleas.
The judge also called the five-year maximum for attempted unlawful sexual intercourse with a girl under 16 “unduly low”. He contrasted it with the potential life sentence for the same offence involving a 13-year-old.