Rapist, 12 given 'one last chance'

May 8 2008 by Hilary Clixby, The Journal

A TWELVE-year-old boy who raped a girl of seven during a drunken truth or dare game has been given a last chance by a judge to keep his freedom after absconding from a residential home.

The boy from Tyneside was made the subject of a three-year supervision order in January this year at Newcastle Crown Court after admitting rape.

He was placed on a residential programme designed to help juvenile offenders after the court heard he came from a troubled background and was in need of specialist treatment.

But the boy, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was back before the court yesterday for breaching the terms of the order by absconding from the home in the south of England.

Judge Michael Cartlidge, who imposed the original order, heard the boy had left the home without authority at 8.15pm on May 5, returning at 8.55pm, having withdrawn money from his account from a cashpoint machine. He also heard the boy had similarly absconded from the home a few days earlier for about an hour and had been warned about his behaviour. Judge Cartlidge yesterday fined the boy £200 and allowed the order to continue, but warned him he faced the prospect of being sent to secure accommodation if he breached the order again.

He said the boy was apparently making some use of the chance he had been given and staff and psychiatrists thought he was making “some progress”. But he told him: “You are coming very close to the point when I am going to send you away to a secure institute, which I don’t think you are going to like. I don’t expect you are going to get this chance again.”

At the hearing in January, prosecutors told how the boy had drunk four cans of lager and downed two miniature bottles of vodka before the attack in Gateshead in September 2006.

He was arrested after the victim told her mother what had happened. While being interviewed by police, he admitted engaging in other sexual activity, including the alleged rape of a four-year-old boy.

Explaining his decision to send the 12-year-old to the residential programme, Judge Cartlidge said the case was an unusual one and he was not helped by sentencing guidelines under the Criminal Justice Act 2003.

He said he concluded the guidelines did not prevent him from sending the boy for treatment, which all the experts who interviewed him agreed he needed.