Here is the report from the local paper's website. I don't know how many 12 year-old girls this judge knows. The counsel's mitigating statement is utterly disingenuous and the judge's rationale of his sentence anything but rational. The whole thing chills me to the bone.
A MAN who had sex with a 12-year-old girl he met on the internet has been jailed for three-and-a-half years.
David Rose, 29, bought vodka and took the child back to his Newark home, Nottingham Crown Court heard.
She was reported missing from the West Midlands by her mum after she disappeared for a day to meet Rose.
"She became drunk and had sex with him," said prosecutor James Hett.
"She made it clear it was consensual. She said she was 19, was working and had a child, when she originally spoke to him."
Mr Hett said the girl's physical appearance was of a girl of 14.
But, according to a police officer, when she spoke it was obvious she was younger than 14. In interviews with police, she said she had contacted Rose via MSN Messenger for two weeks before they arranged to meet earlier this month.
She had bought child tickets on the bus and at the cinema with Rose, so by then he should have been aware she was under-age. They had sex at least four times, and Rose, of Railway Court, Newark, did not use contraception.
The court heard he had previously been cautioned for gross indecency after having sex with a 15-year-old girl in public. He pleaded guilty, at a preliminary hearing, to raping a child under 13.
Martin Elwick, mitigating, said: "To use an old expression, she was 'made up to the nines'.
"She gave every impression to him that she drank and smoked and was ready to concede to have sex with him. He is adamant he isn't someone who has a problem, who looks for girls to have sex with him. There is no suggestion of force."
Judge Michael Stokes, QC, Recorder of Nottingham, said Rose must sign the sex offenders' register for life.
"You will be 30 years of age in May. This girl was 12 and that in itself shows the wide gap not only chronologically in years but in experience, common sense and judgment.
"I accept, and it is something that has reduced the sentence substantially, that this is not a case of an older man searching the internet to contact an under-age girl deliberately.
"This complainant accepts that she lied to you on MSN about her age and gave the impression in the information she was sending you that she was more mature and grown up than she actually was."
