Predator facing ‘significant’ jail term for grooming boy online and abusing him

Predator facing ‘significant’ jail term for grooming boy online and abusing him

11 November 2015

A KILLYLEAGH man has been warned he is facing a “significant” jail sentence for sexually abusing a schoolboy.

Forty six year-old David Strutt, who groomed the teenager on Facebook before abusing him, appeared at Downpatrick Crown Court this week. He is charged with one count of meeting a child following sexual grooming and another of inciting a child to engage in sexual activity between September 1st, 2012 and July 17, 2013.

A prosecution lawyer told the court how Strutt sent the boy hundreds of graphic, sexually explicit texts which suggested there had been other incidents of abuse. However, while Strutt has admitted the two offences he is charged with he has denied he committed any further abuse.

Prosecution lawyer Samuel Magee told the court how Strutt and the schoolboy met through Facebook before the defendant began to groom his victim, often giving him money and cigarettes on demand.

 The lawyer said while messages at the beginning had been innocent, despite knowing “full well” the boy was only 15-years-old, “the contact quickly turned to a sexual nature.” 

By February 2013, messages “would suggest that by that time, the defendant had a keen sexual interest in the injured party and more often than not, instigated sexual conversation between them.”

The text messaging was described as “prolific and daily” and the teenager was asked to go to Strutt’s Ardigon Road home “at all hours of the day for sexual activity.”

The lawyer said however that despite all of the evidence, Strutt “continues to deny any sexual attraction in the injured party.”

Mr Magee said while many messages were open to interpretation and suggested sexual activity had taken place on many occasions, the Crown cannot prove beyond reasonable doubt what actually happened and what was a fantasy on Strutt’s part.

He told Judge Grant that “at it’s height,” the case against Strutt amounts to two instances of a sex act being performed on the defendant and one incident of the boy touching Strutt’s private parts.

Although Mr Magee maintained that he had “been as clear as I can be” about Strutt’s offending and that the “hundreds” of texts could be viewed as an aggravating factor when it came to passing sentence, Judge Piers Grant told the lawyer “I have to say I’m not happy with this as a statement of facts.”

Labelling the texts as “powerful evidence,” the judge said anyone reading the volume of explicit text messages “would interpret them as serious and repeated sexual activity having taken place,” adding that the texting “between the parties with promises or suggestions of sexual activity is a significant factor” when it came to passing sentence.

He told Mr Magee that if the Crown was not putting the text messages forward as things which had actually happened, they were so prejudicial that they “should be excised” from the prosecution opening of the case.

Adjourning the case for a week, Judge Grant told the prosecution and defence that he wanted a signed statement of agreed facts from them before he would sentence Strutt.

Strutt was released on bail pending his sentencing hearing.