Ex-mayor who groomed girl for sex jailed for nine years
A FORMER mayor was jailed for nine years after a judge heard how he used a teenage girl as a sex object and even encouraged her to sleep in bed alongside him and his wife.
Ex-Tory councillor Simon Thornton told police who arrested him: ‘You know I am the mayor of Godalming?’
Thornton, 6, admitted 22 charges involving having sexual relations with the girl when she was aged between 13 and 15. He denied two other counts of paying for sex and producing child pornography.
He began grooming the girl from her 13th birthday, buying her phones, pick- ing her up from school and inviting her to his work and home. They established a routine involving texting each other a code.
Thornton took any opportunity to have sex with her, Guildford Crown Court heard, including at his work at a butcher’s shop, in his van, or on a local common. He also had the girl sleep in bed beside him and his now ex-wife.
In a statement, his victim said: ‘I thought I loved Simon, he never made me feel scared or vulnerable.’
But since then, she said, ‘I have lacked self-respect for myself which has caused me to make poor decisions. I was forced to grow up too quickly and I have suffered depression.’
Judge Robert Fraser told Thornton: ‘You have forever blighted her life.’
‘You have forever blighted her life’