This is just wrong. But if she's 11...so am I.

That judge needs to be removed from the court permanently. I hope HE gets raped.

The female in the picture is not the 11-year old being discussed.

Don't care. 11 is 11. ; )

that is one ugly woman he's with. karma moves in mysterious ways...

The judge should be removed for such an idiotic ruling.

Would he say that a drug dealer should be allowed to walk away free because his customers welcomed the product?

Is the girl advanced? Did she welcome the molesting? Perhaps she did, but that is a moot point. It doesn't matter if she is a sweet little angelic girl who loves her My LittlePony or if she is a little tramp who really loves her My LittlePony, the activity is still illegal. Consent has no bearing on the crime.

Haven't we learned that dress is no excuse for rape?

are those trackmarks on his hand? that picture just frightens me all around.

Luckily their courts did:

Wtf does that mean?!!

I don't really agree with the general idea that the judge is wrong. Granted, the punishment for the man should have been enforce purely because he was breaking the law and knew it.

But the judge is pretty brave in coming out and saying that a minor that pretends to be an adult to seduce an adult male must be held responsible in some way. I don't know any 11 year old that would do that so this is obviously a special circumstance. A judge doesn't just decide this out of nowhere.

Posting as a 20-year-old on the internet was incredibly stupid, yes, but if you read the entire article, this man tried to rape her in an alleyway. I don't think she "did that".

This wasn't some guy who just chatted up a girl on the internet and then regretted it when she told him how young she was. After she told him she was 12, he still pursued her and then assaulted her. I don't care how much "sexual awareness" this girl had, there's no excuse for what that man did to her, or for this judge letting him walk.

WRONG.

No matter what. It is up to the adult to say "NO I will not have sex with this CHILD" Even if the child walks up to them totally naked, lies in the bed and yells "F*ck me". The adult MUST choose to do the right thing. Period.

while i do agree, not so must he child is a total victim in this case, i believe some fault IS hers and she should also be punished, it does always lie with the adult to walk away. i honestly had sympathy for him until the bit where she told him she was 12 and he didnt bail on the spot as he should of done.

Please, whenever you see the banner Daily Mail exercise extreme caution before leaping to conclusions.

They are hysterical fear-mongers and absolutely the worst news source in the UK. Never trust a single word they publish because you can guarantee that it is there to serve their purpose, not the purpose of reportage.

Now bearing that in mind, put all knee-jerk reactions out of your mind and re-read the article.

In summing up, the Judge acknowledged that the behaviour of the child was inappropriate. Given what she did (joining an adult website under false pretenses, posing as an adult etc.), if he did not draw attention to this it would have been a serious miscarriage of justice and he would have deserved to have been disbarred as a result.

What he did not do was base his sentencing on this. It's disguised, but it is there in that very article:

That was his reason for the sentence. No leniency was given to Dixon on account of the victim's behaviour.

Whether or not this is an appropriate sentence is a different matter entirely, but that is the reason why we have a judicial process - so that no one person can have overall control in just such a circumstance.

Oh, and in case you didn't spot it (although to me it's glaringly obvious) The Daily Mail's agenda here is to create the illusion that under a Labour Government, law and order have collapsed, with the implication that things would be better under the Tories.

It's one of their most common angles.

Pretty much second only to mandating the expulsion from the country of anyone foreign.

Wish I could upvote that twice Pocksucket, great points

Well I did make the point that he was wrong and should be punished, but you missed that.

Pock made all the points I would have tried to make, so thank you pock.

I also editted out of my original post, before posting it, that this news source is using the words sexual assault and rape as the technical terms for the charges, it doesn't necessarily mean there was any violence or force or even anything under his doing. If the girl grabbed the guy and started giving him oral sex, they are going to call it him raping or assaulting her. But I have no idea what really happened, and I'm guessing the news source doesn't either.

There is no special circumstance here. It's what separates children from adults (or should)...the adult knows that the child isn't as experienced or as knowledgeable as they might feel and claim to be. An adult that takes advantage of a child's erroneous bravado is always in the wrong.

If an 11 year old told you they were an expert driver and would love to give your car a spin, would you just hand over the keys based on what they claim to know and want?

Kevin