28-yr-old Carl Hodgson has been jailed for 2 years for sexual activity with a 12 yr-old girl whom he claims he believed was 19.
He invited the minor to his flat in Manchester city centre a few days after they met on a dating app.
He recorded her on his mobile phone as she was wearing stockings and sent it to his friend Manchester Crown Court was told.
The defendant pleaded guilty at earlier hearings to causing or inciting a child under 13 to engage in sexual activity, engaging in sexual activity in the presence of a child, distributing an indecent photograph of a child and making indecent photographs of a child.
Judge David Stockdale QC said that the victim was by reason of her age highly vulnerable to exploitation and that she was no doubt impressed by Hodgson.
According to the Metro, the judge said:
“This is most serious offending as you know fully appreciate the effects on a child of such a young age of the finding of this sort are really well to known and well to documented.”
“These effects, in many cases, last for the rest of the child’s life.”
“I take into account of while the victim was 12 years of age at the time of these offences you did not believe that to be the case. You took, and on reasonable grounds, that she was over 16.”
The court was told that the girls use the different name on the dating profile and stated that her age was actually 19 years of age.
Hodgson made one clip of the girl and also captured 3 still images of her on his mobile phone while they’re in his flat.
The case has sparked a major debate in the UK as Hodgson has been put on the sex offender register for life even though he believed the girl was 19 years of age.
Many people are saying that dating apps need to be more transparent in how people actually produce identification to prove what are their real age.
What are your thoughts on this? Tell us in the Facebook post comments?