Teenager who watched porn from age 12 raped schoolgirl
a TEENaGER who started watching online pornography from the age of 12 went on to repeatedly rape a child.
William Nicholson, 19, used his victim as an ‘experimental’ plaything over several years to satisfy his warped sexual curiosity.
a judge has now warned parents to monitor their children more closely after a court heard how Nicholson may have acted out porn scenes accessed through his Xbox games console.
The teenager, from Darlington, County Durham, was 14 when he started abusing the primary school pupil.
The girl kept her ordeal a secret until 2015 when she confided in a family friend and the police were called in, Teesside Crown Court heard.
Judge Peter armstrong said Nicholson’s access to pornography from such an early age had had a ‘serious deleterious effect’ on him.
‘One of the remarkable pieces of evidence in the case was that he had started looking at pornography at the age of 12,’ he said.
‘It almost beggars belief. It is a warning to parents to monitor their children’s activities rather than them being left to their own devices in their bedrooms.
‘I can’t believe it didn’t have an effect on him.’
The judge added: ‘It is behaviour where it is experimenting or curi- ous and perhaps acting out what he had seen using [the girl] as an object to do that.’
The Daily Mail’s Block Online Porn campaign has called for automatic curbs on adult material on the internet to protect the under-18s. Nicholson was found guilty of two charges of rape, attempted rape, two indecent assaults and causing or inciting a child to engage in sexual activity at an earlier hearing.
appearing for sentencing on Friday, he was sent to a young offenders’ institution for six years.
He was given a range of sanctions, including being put on the sex offenders’ register for life and a ban on working with children.
Nicholson was also given an indefinite sexual harm prevention order, prohibiting him from any unsupervised contact with under16s and restricting his computer and internet use. Chris Baker, defending, said the teenager had dropped out of school seven years ago and his behaviour had become heavily influenced by adults.
The court was told that combined with home tutoring, it meant he was ‘involved in adult matters far too early in his life’.
Nicholson’s victim said in a statement before the trial: ‘I find it hard to trust people. I trust my Mum, but I find it hard to tell people personal things.
‘all of this has made me have nightmares. I cry in my sleep, and when I wake up, I feel scared.’
after the case was over, the girl said: ‘When this was happening, I felt really confused. I knew it was wrong, but I didn’t know how to put it into words. Now, I really understand it was rape, and he had no right to do that to me. I’m happy that people have believed me, and the jury believed me.’