Are teens the latest demographic who are not required to be responsible for their actions?
A teenager who raped a five-year-old girl while babysitting her was spared a custodial sentence after a judge heard he had been ‘corrupted’ by internet pornography.
In a disturbing case that has raised fresh concerns about the sexualization of children, the 14-year-old told his young victim to cover her eyes before performing an indecent act on her while her parents were out.
But instead of jailing the boy, a judge spared spared him, blaming ‘the world and society’ for his exposure to explicit sexual material on the web.
The case comes amid growing alarm about the impact of sexual content on the internet on Britain’s children.
Just last month, a government report found a wave of depraved sex attacks across Britain was being carried out by youngsters who have had their minds warped by online porn.
Appearing in the dock wearing his school uniform, the teenager, now 15, was handed a three-year community order at Cambridge Crown Court.
The boy who cannot be named for legal reasons pleaded guilty to raping a girl aged under 13 after his victim told her father what had happened.
Prosecutor John Kellett said the boy had been paid £10 [$15 USD] to look after the little girl at her home in Cambridge last December.
But after he left, the girl described to her father how she had been subjected to the oral rape after the teenager told her to cover her eyes.
Mr Kellett said: ‘The father thought he must have misheard and she repeated it.’
The father told police what had happened and the girl repeated her story to officers the following day.
The teenager admitted the offense to police and told officers that it happened when he had ‘lost his mind and didn’t know what he was doing’.
He added: ‘I think my hormones took over.’
Mr Kellett said the boy admitted he regularly looked at pornography on his laptop at home.
The court heard the victim’s father was very concerned about the long-term psychological damage caused to his daughter by the traumatic experience.
Spared jail: Judge Gareth Hawkesworth warned the boy that he would have been jailed for six and a half years if he had been four years older
Julia Flanagan, defending, said the boy knew how his actions had impacted on his family, specifically his mother, who had given up her job as a childminder.
She said: ‘This was an isolated incident. There was no threat or force used and he stopped immediately.
‘He is an isolated and solitary child. He was watching excessive pornography which was very inappropriate for his age.
‘We have a very frightened and remorseful boy who is very ashamed of what he has done. He knows that what he has done will follow him for the rest of his life.
‘He is marked to some as a sexual deviant forever.’
Judge Gareth Hawkesworth warned the boy that he would have been jailed for six and a half years if he had been four years older, but he instead gave him the three-year community order with a supervision requirement.
‘I’m satisfied it was impulsive and I believe you have become sexualized by your exposure to and the corruption of pornography. Your exposure at such a young age has ended in tragedy.
‘It was the fault of the world and society.’
The judge requested six monthly reports be sent to him to monitor to the boy’s progress and ordered him to register his whereabouts with the police for two and a half years.
A sexual offenses prevention order was also made for five years, stating he must not access or seek to access pornography of any kind.
The youth was also banned from using any mobile devices or computers without suitable filters to prevent the viewing of pornography.
Last month, a boy of 12 who raped a nine-year-old girl after watching hard-core pornography online was also spared jail as his lawyer warned of a generation of children growing up with a ‘skewed view’ on sex.
The schoolboy told police he had raped the little girl because he wanted to ‘feel grown up’ after watching porn online.
Today’s case comes three weeks after Deputy Children’s Commissioner Sue Berelowitz told MPs there ‘isn’t a town, village or hamlet in which children are not being sexually exploited’.
And she said easy access to ‘extreme’ internet porn was to blame as it ‘affected children’s thresholds of what they think is normal’.
Giving evidence to the Commons home affairs committee, Miss Berelowitz told of her great concern about what internet porn was doing to vulnerable young minds.
She explained: ‘We’ve had boys say to us – some of the boys I’ve spoken to who’ve been involved in sexual exploitation – “it was like being in a porn movie”.
‘They have watched things and then they’ve enacted them. It has definitely affected children’s thresholds of what they think is normal.’
In one vile case she uncovered, boys aged 14 and 15 were ‘summoned’ via BlackBerry Messenger to the gang rape of a ‘very, very young girl’ which lasted several days.
Source: DailyMail
