A SEXUALLY abused teenager was determined her abuser would face justice.
Peter Reynolds travelled from his home in north Yorkshire to Rugby where he sexually abused a vulnerable 15-year-old girl he had groomed over the internet.
Despite the trauma of her ordeal, Reynolds’ victim took steps to track her abuser down when she believed the police were not doing enough to catch him.
And the resourceful teenager was at Warwick Crown Court to see the 50 year-old, who was living in Harrogate at the time, get jailed for ten years.
He had pleaded guilty to inciting the girl to take part in sexual activity, meeting her following sexual grooming, and six further sexually-related assault charges.
Sentencing Reynolds, who also admitted possessing and distributing indecent images of children as young as six months old, Recorder Gareth Evans QC ordered him to register as a sex offender for life.
Prosecutor Grace Hale said in May 2013, a then 15-year-old Rugby girl made contact with Reynolds on a chat website, and on that first occasion they chatted for two hours.
She found Reynolds, who was using the name Paul and whose face was not visible on his webcam, to be ‘a very nice person,’ and after that they texted and chatted daily on their phones.
But he quickly changed and started to demand she perform sex acts in front of the camera for him.
Reynolds, who talked of wanting to treat her like a slave and to have her tied up and hit, became increasingly insistent they should meet, pestering her to do so for about a month before she agreed.
He drove to Rugby, and when they met up by a wood, where he sexually abused her.
The girl did not report it then, but the police were contacted after she told someone in October what had happened, and officers attempted to contact ‘Paul,’ but were not able to do so.
So the girl, who Miss Hale said did not think the police were doing enough, sent Reynolds a Facebook message which led to him phoning her and she was able to pass his number to the police.
Officers were then able to identify his car which had been caught on a CCTV camera in Rugby, but by then he had moved and was eventually traced to an address in Stockton-on-Tees.
When arrested, Reynolds claimed although he had met the girl, who he insisted was 17, nothing had happened because he was not attracted to her.
The police also seized his computer on which they found indecent images of very young girls, aged from six months to ten years old, including one of a six-month-old baby being raped.
They also discovered online conversations with other paedophiles, with whom he had exchanged indecent images, in which he described in crude terms what he had done to the girl.
Reynolds’ victim bravely read out her own victim impact statement in which she said she had tried to take her own life because of what had happened, and told the judge: “What happened to me has devastated my life.
“I feel really angry towards this man. I’ll never forgive him. I want him to feel guilty for what he did every single day.”
Matthew Barnes, defending, said Reynolds had himself been feeling suicidal following the death of his long-term partner from cancer in 2011, and had been using the images and smoking cannabis ‘as a crutch.’
Jailing Reynolds, Recorder Evans told him: “In many ways you have ruined her future. You have fundamentally changed that young girl’s life.”
