Paedophile who abused schoolgirl, 13, told police ‘she wanted it as much as me’
A convicted paedophile who groomed a 13-year-old girl for sex has been jailed for eight years.
Joshua Martin, 26, told the schoolgirl to say she was 19 when they met his friends. Prosecutor Kitty Colley told Leeds Crown Court Martin sexually abused her ‘around 15 times’.
She threw up on one occasion, while Martin callously told her on another: ‘If you want me to stop, I will stop but this isn’t helpful to me’.
When interviewed by police, he said: “Can we get this over with please as it’s making me look like the bad guy. I know she’s 14, she wanted it as much as me, I’m not the only one to blame.”
Martin pleaded guilty to four counts of sexual activity with a child and failing to comply with notification requirements following a 2021 conviction of having indecent images.
Judge Kate Rayfield said she was satisfied Martin is ‘sexually attracted to 13 to 15-year-old girls’, as shown by his convictions.
She told him: ‘You embarked upon a sexual relationship with a girl.
‘Except, it wasn’t a proper relationship because she was a child, and you were an adult.’
The court heard he first met the schoolgirl when she was 13 through a friend, who later reported him to the police after growing suspicious that he was in a relationship with the youngster.
Prosecutor Kitty Colley said: ‘[The victim] told the officers she first met him when she was at McDonald’s with her friend.
‘She messaged him on Snapchat, and he responded to her and he knew her age. They communicated for around three months before she went to his flat at his invitation. She confided in him.
‘The prosecution say this is classic grooming.’
Defending, Graeme Wilson told the court Martin now accepts his underage victim is not to blame and ‘there can be no excuse for what he did’, YorkshireLive reports.
DC Leia Houtekamer said: ‘Martin is a registered sex offender who groomed and then committed sexual offences against a teenage victim, while in full knowledge that she was under the age of consent.
‘All reports of sexual offences are taken extremely seriously and fully investigated by specialist safeguarding detectives.
‘We always urge victims to come forward and can promise that the needs of victims are at the forefront of our investigations.’
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.
For more stories like this, check our news page.