Man jailed for having sex with 14-year-old girl

Text-luring and having sex with a 14-year-old Calgary girl has led to a 21/2-year sentence for the offender.

While the Crown was seeking a 41/2-year prison stint, Court of Queen’s Bench Justice Beth Hughes on Thursday handed down the shorter penalty after Andrew Wolford pleaded guilty to luring and sexual assault.

The man was 28 years old when he first encountered the girl on a chat and dating smartphone application in the fall of 2015.

Her mother soon became aware of the communications.

“She told her mother he was 17 years old. That was a lie,” reads an agreed statement of facts.

The relationship between the mother and daughter became strained. The girl’s phone was confiscated when the teen went to live with her father.

Soon, the woman began reading the text messages between her daughter and Wolford.

It was then the mother alerted police, who searched Wolford’s Temple home on Feb. 11, 2016, and arrested him the following day.

In the agreed statement, the

girl initially told Wolford she was aged 19, but “he became aware she was 14 years old three or four days after their initial electronic communication … before the first time they engaged in sexual intercourse.

“He used a condom to protect against sexually transmitted infections and unplanned pregnancy,” states the document.

The two had met to have sex at least three times at his home and at hers, and exchanged more than 5,000 messages between Sept. 27 and Oct. 29, 2015.

Hughes gave Wolford credit for his guilty pleas, for not having digitally shared any images of the girl, for his co-operation with police and for not actually seeking out underage girls.