by Natalie Valios
Occasionally, decisions by the judiciary make my heart sink. A case in point is the story in today’s papers which reports on a court case involving 20-year-old Jon Dixon who tried to rape an 11-year-old girl.
They met on internet chatroom Flirtomatic, where the girl posed as a 20-year-old. When they later sent each other over 900 graphic text messages, she said she was 12. Rather than ending all contact immediately, Dixon continued to pursue her. He sexually assaulted her when they met for the first time during her school lunch break and two days later he tried to rape her.
In his wisdom, Judge Robert Atherton said that Dixon had not deliberately sought out a child. I beg to differ. Even Dixon pleaded guilty to meeting a child following sexual grooming, sexual assault of a child and attempted rape.
Atherton went on to say that the girl expressed “herself in relation to sexual matters with an awareness which would make many twice her age blush”.
I don’t know the girl’s circumstances, but many children who seem sexually provocative are so because they have been abused. Even where this isn’t the case, there are no circumstances in which any behaviour by a child can be used as an excuse by an adult for sexually abusing them.
Atherton rejected an assessment by the probation service that Dixon posed a ‘high risk of serious harm to children’. Instead, he sentenced Dixon to a three-year community order, saying that he would not get the treatment he needed in the overcrowded prison service. There is no detail on whether he will be receiving any treatment in the community.
This 11-year-old girl has now been abused twice – once by Dixon, and a second time by the court, which has sought to place some of the blame for almost being raped on her shoulders.
The maximum penalty for a male having unlawful sexual intercourse with a girl under 13 is life. Dixon may not have had intercourse, but it wasn’t from lack of trying. He is a paedophile, and as such will be cunning and predatory, as well as a high risk candidate for reoffending. Young girls in his area of Manchester aren't safe while he is on our streets.