Huddersfield sex fiend teenager locked up
Aug 21 2010 Huddersfield Daily Examiner
A TEENAGER used six young girls like “sexual trophies”.
And the youngster, branded callous and indifferent to their feelings, threatened to harm them if they told anyone what happened.
Now he has been locked up after a court was told his victims had to have counselling to get them over their ordeals.
But the callous attacker cannot be named – a judge rejected a plea by journalists to lift an order protecting his identity.
The Dalton teenager, who is now 16, had unprotected sex with four of the complainants, tried to have sex with another and sexually touched a sixth during a spate of offending last year.
The teenager, who was himself only 15 at the time, made threats to some of the girls if they told anyone what had happened and told one youngster that he would stab her the next time he saw her.
Bradford Crown Court heard yesterday that the teenager sent one girl a message via Facebook in which he threatened to “brick her windows”.
The girls, who were aged between 13 and 15, cannot be identified for legal reasons and after legal arguments yesterday Judge Jonathan Durham Hall QC rejected an application by the media to be allowed to publish the defendant’s name.
The boy originally faced charges of rape after the incidents came to light, but at a hearing in July the prosecution accepted the teenager's guilty pleas to six charges of sexual activity with a child.
His barrister John Elvidge QC emphasised that the boy’s pleas were on the basis that the activity with the girls had been consensual and it was not a case, for example, of a 40-year-old man and a 15-year-old girl.
“The reasons these rape charges have been withdrawn is because the complainants in this case consented to the sexual acts. That is the basis on which he will be dealt,” said Mr Elvidge.
“There is no easy way of getting that very important fact across, unpalatable as it may be.”
Mr Elvidge submitted that his client and the community would benefit from the teenager, who had been in custody since February, being supervised and educated under a proposed two or three-year youth rehabilitation order which would include a curfew requirement.
“In my submission his welfare demands he ought to have that intervention and that is in the public interest because it is more likely to prevent further offending in the future,” added Mr Elvidge.
