In court

Abstract

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 sheltered upbringing. Though V. had not told him the truth, he had not actively questioned 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 references 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 Community and Criminal Justice