Tech boss groomed girl of 14 for sex on teenage ‘snog, marry, avoid’ website
‘I have nightmares about the abuse’
A GIRL of 14 was groomed for sex by a businessman more than twice her age after he targeted her through a social media site that urges teenagers to ‘snog, marry or avoid’.
Web designer Gareth Hughes, then 36, lied about his age on the Snog.fm page to seduce the besotted schoolgirl, routinely picking her up from school and showering her with gifts, a court heard.
The ‘highly educated’ paedophile would take her back to his apartment and film them having sex, storing hundreds of images on his computer in a file labelled ‘filth’.
Struggling to escape the abuse, the girl handed teachers an essay about a teenager being raped by an older man. But it was only after four years of abuse that she finally plucked up the courage to tell her horrified parents.
She invited Hughes to dinner at the family home before handing them a letter detailing the abuse she had suffered, and the police were called.
Inquiries revealed the computer science graduate had claimed two other victims, one of whom was also targeted through the Snog.fm site. Yesterday the 43-yearold father of two was sentenced to six years and eight months in prison after being branded a ‘manipulative’ and ‘predatory’ paedophile. The case comes as charities call for urgent action to force social media sites to do more to stop young children setting up profiles through which they can be preyed upon.
Backing calls for action as he jailed Hughes, Judge Paul Lawton said the girls’ ages ‘only highlights the need for the law to protect them from themselves’.
The girl was just 14 when Hughes messaged her through the site, which asks users to rate one another as ‘snog, marry or avoid’, Minshull Street Crown Court in Manchester heard. Telling her ‘she had a young body’, he lied that he was 26 while she told him she was 16, prosecutor Simone Flynn said. Finding him ‘funny’ and feeling ‘flattered’, she agreed to meet at a local Tesco.
Between 2012 – when his girlfriend was pregnant – and 2016, Hughes regularly took the girl back to his apartment for sex.
In 2013 – shortly before her GCSEs – the court heard the victim handed her English teacher a story about ‘a girl meeting a man in town and flashbacks that happen reveal that she had been abused’.
‘When the teacher asked the girl what the inspiration was, she said: “Isn’t it obvious I have been raped?”’ Miss Flynn said. It was reported to her headteacher, but the girl refused to share more details.
In October 2016, the girl went to the police and officers found 260 images on Hughes’s computers. They also found chat logs detailing sexual conversations with ‘many young females from different countries’, the detective in charge said.
The victim told police she had been ‘so young and vulnerable I wasn’t even sure how to stand up for myself’ and had contemplated suicide. ‘I have nightmares about the abuse. Sometimes I have flashbacks during consensual sexual encounters. It has caused me emotional damage that will last as long as I live.’
She is now at university but struggling with her studies as a result of the trauma.
Hughes, from Reddish, Greater Manchester, pleaded guilty to five counts of sexual activity with a child and two counts of inciting a child to engage in sexual activity. He also admitted 11 counts relating to making or distributing indecent images.
His lawyer Patrick Cassidy described him as ‘a man of talent and education’ who was ‘remorseful’.
But Judge Lawton branded him a ‘highly educated but manipulative man’ who had ‘caused life-long psychological damage’.
An NSPCC spokesman said: ‘This case clearly underlines the huge importance of an independent regulator for social networks. Tech companies have failed to police themselves and the new body must have the power to punish those not doing enough to protect our children.’