Pervert is jailed for sex with girl (From Bournemouth Echo)

Pervert is jailed for sex with girl

7:00am Saturday 4th July 2009 in

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A PAEDOPHILE who robbed a schoolgirl of her childhood innocence, just days after proposing to his unsuspecting partner, has been jailed for four and a half years.

Peter Grant, 37, admitted two sex assault offences and two charges of having sex with his 14-year-old victim.

Bournemouth Crown Court heard how the illicit liaison had started last December after the girl told Grant that she “had a crush on him”. He gave her a phone and they started exchanging text messages.

The first offences took place just eight days after Grant from Brook Road, Bournemouth, proposed to his partner, who agreed to marry him.

In January he had sex with his young victim twice.

When his fiancee discovered what he had done, she told detectives she had been “totally shocked and felt physically sick”.

The court heard that Grant’s victim, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, had been “vulnerable” and the father-of-two knew she was only 14 at the time.

After insisting that the girl had forced him to touch her, he finally admitted his guilt after police found a letter he had written to the girl in his car saying: “Maybe we are wrong for each other. I never meant to hurt you in any way at all.

“What we have done is wrong and against the law. I have truly fallen in love with you.

“Everything I have ever said is true. I have never felt this kind of love before.”

His victim told detectives she had felt “horrible and wanted to jump into a bath”.

After she confided in a friend, “the story went round her school like wildfire,” the court was told.

In Grant’s defence, the court was told that he was a man of previous good character and had entered an early guilty plea.

He had suffered bouts of depression and low self-esteem, drinking too much and sometimes taking cannabis “to get through the day.”

Sentencing Grant, Judge Gary Burrell QC told him: “You must have known that what you were doing was wrong and illegal.

“You allowed this relationship to develop, took advantage of her tender years and immaturity. Prior to this she was a virgin.

“The offences are so serious only immediate custody is appropriate.”

Grant was ordered to register as a sex offender indefinitely and banned from being with girls under the age of 16.