In court
| Published date | 01 June 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/02645505231174260 |
| Date | 01 June 2023 |
| Subject Matter | In court |
In court
Nigel Stone, Visiting Fellow in the School of Psychology, University of East Anglia,
reviews recent appeal judgements and other judicial developments that inform sen-
tencing and early release.
Sexual harm
‘Reasonable belief’that girl aged 12 was 16
When aged 19 and without any criminal history M. had encountered V. on the
dating app Tinder which seeks to apply a minimum age of 18 for participants.
She was aged 12, 2 months away from her 13th birthday, and was subsequently
described as a ‘highly vulnerable child’who her mother found difficult to control.
They arranged to meet and he and male friends met her and one of her friends.
Her friend identified herself as aged 12 but V. claimed to be aged 20, with her
own independent accommodation and a car.
Around a month later he travelled to London to meet up with her and they spent
36 hours together travelling around by train, in the course of which they had vaginal
intercourse (once) and she gave him oral sex (twice), at various station locations, to
ejaculation in each instance. V.’s mother eventually located her, by now ‘missing
from home’, and confronted M.
Prosecuted for rape of a child aged under-13, M. offered a basis for plea that at
no time had he believed that V. was under-16. The prosecution did not dispute this
but initially claimed that the sexual activity had been against V.’s wishes. CCTV
footage evidenced no distress on her part or any indication that sex had been
forced upon her. An initial pre-sentence report (PSR) had been completed on the
basis of non-consensual sex and a further PSR had been required. This reported
that M. appeared somewhat immature for his age, having had a somewhat shel-
tered upbringing. Though V. had not told him the truth, he had not actively ques-
tioned her account and had not seen any evidence to verify her claims about
accommodation or driving. He had cause to reasonably suspect that she was in
fact younger than her claimed age. He regretted not asking her. Character refer-
ences to the court described him as well-mannered, sensible and fundamentally
decent. His own letter to the judge had shown ‘limited insight into the offences’,
The Journal of Communit
y
and Criminal Justice
Probation Journal
2023, Vol. 70(2) 205–217
© The Author(s) 2023
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/02645505231174260
journals.sagepub.com/home/prb
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