Jailed for three years, corporal’s wife who had sex with boy of 14
She also seduced his 17-year-old brother, court told
A CORPORAL’S wife was jailed for three years yesterday for having sex with the 14-year-old son of a soldier – after a judge said her original suspended sentence was ‘unjustifiably’ soft.
Caroline Salisbury, 28, was given a two-year suspended sentence in March for sleeping with the teenager, whom she met on a school bus at a British military base in Germany.
But at the Court of Appeal yesterday, that sentence was overturned for being ‘too lenient’. Instead, three senior judges sentenced her to three years in prison with immediate effect.
It emerged at the hearing that the mother-of-two had also had sex with the boy’s 17-year-old brother a year before. The court also heard how Royal Military Police warned Salisbury away from the 14-year-old twice after being told what was happening, but did not arrest her.
Salisbury covered her head with her pink jacket as she was carted off into a police van and led to the cells from the Royal Courts of Justice in London.
Sir Brian Leveson told the appeals court: ‘There was absolutely no justification whatsoever to reaching… anything like two years.
‘In our judgment, the very least sentence which could be passed is one of three years imprisonment.’
Sir Brian, sitting with Mr Justice Kenneth Parker and Mr Justice Stewart, added: ‘I have never seen such a case like it.
‘I have never seen a case where an offender has been warned by the police, where the conduct is of real gravity, not once but twice.’
He listed a host of aggravating features, including her attempts to delete sordid Facebook conversations and her ‘revolting’ attempt to claim that the boy had raped her.
This accusation collapsed when a Facebook video message she sent to him was found, saying: ‘I cannot wait for you to f*** me again.’ She had also told the boy not to go to the police, claiming she would have her children taken away.
The judges were told how she had sex with the boy’s 17- year- old brother a year before she began grooming the boy, who was 13 when he first visited her family home.
Salisbury, from Suffolk, met the child in her role as a school bus monitor. She set up a Facebook account using a different name and contacted him, inviting him to her house which she shared with her husband and two young children.
A court in Colchester heard how she had groomed her victim and plied him with alcohol while her husband was on duty overseas. She claimed she acted as she did because she was ‘starved of affection’ by her estranged husband David – then a corporal in the Royal Engineers, based in Germany.
After sleeping with the boy on two occasions, she was contacted by the RMP who warned her against seeing the boy again.
But she but continued to groom him using a pseudonym on Facebook and slept with him on another two occasions.
Judge Advocate Emma Peters, sitting at a service civilian court in Colchester in March, took pity on Salisbury and gave her a two-year jail term, suspended for two years.
After the sentence was passed, the boy’s family, including his father who is a serving soldier, and an MP, complained to the Attorney Gen-
‘I have never seen a case like it’ ‘It is a bizarre situation’
eral that this was too soft. At the hearing yesterday, Oliver Glasgow, counsel for the Attorney General, said: ‘It is a bizarre situation when the Royal Military Police are alerted to a sexual relationship between an adult and a child and what they do is issue a warning rather than taking matters further.’
The case had to be postponed yesterday when Salisbury began weeping uncontrollably and was taken outside the courtroom.
Peter Glenser, defending, said she had deserved the ‘wholly exceptional’ get- out- of- jail- free card handed to her in March.
But Sir Brian said: ‘You’ve got a vulnerable young boy who was prey to the misconduct of this mature lady who had children who were only seven years younger.
‘Her statement that she had not been a willing participant was utterly undermined by the message on Facebook.’
The judge also criticised Judge Advocate Peters, who had called the sentencing guidelines ‘brutal’ at the original hearing.
He added: ‘I wonder if she would have said that they were brutal if it was a male and a 13-year-old girl.’