An 18-year-old man has avoided prison for sexual offending against an underage girl he met on social media.
Instead of prison, Dunedin labourer Jacob John Graham was given seven months’ home detention with special conditions for counselling, treatment and psychological assessment to continue for six months after the end of the detention.
Graham, who earlier accepted the indicated sentence of home detention, was dealt with by Judge Michael Crosbie in the Dunedin District Court yesterday on one charge of sexual conduct with a young person under 16.
It was "another case" where young people had been communicating on social media, the judge said.
"But the main point here is she was much younger than you — too young to give her consent."
The defendant had no prior convictions and it was fair to say he had received "the shock of his life", defence counsel Jim Takas said.
When they met about March 5 last year after some discussions on Facebook, the girl was 14 but had told Graham she was 16. He was 17. After they met, he learnt she was 14.
They talked about a plan to have sexual intercourse and, later that day, Graham took the girl to a relative’s house in Dunedin where he was staying. He said the girl had nowhere else to stay and the uncle agreed she could stay the night, but in a different bedroom.
During the evening, the pair went into a bedroom together. The girl took off her clothes and Graham started having protected sexual intercourse with her. Their intimacy was interrupted by the uncle banging on the bedroom door.
In her victim impact statement, the girl said she had lied about her age because she thought the defendant would not want to be around her if he knew she was 14. They had both wanted to have sex and she "did not really mind about the things they did together".
Looking back, it was not the smartest thing to have done, to go to a stranger, although she was "OK with it at the time", she said. She now regretted it. She said they had not managed to have sex anyway but what did happen really hurt. She said she was "okay" with doing what they did and said it had not affected her at all.
But the girl’s mother said in her statement it made her sick her daughter told Graham she was 14 but he still participated. He should have known better, she said. Her daughter had learning difficulties was mentally young, impressionable, vulnerable and easily manipulated.
Judge Crosbie said he had often spoken to groups of young men in schools and the message was, it did not matter what the other person said "if you know they are under 16".
"You have escaped prison by a whisker, because of your age and the circumstances," the judge said, warning Graham any breach of either the home detention or the special conditions would mean prison.
