August 2013
Pervert who preyed on young Rugby girl escapes jail
A MAN who persuaded a young Rugby girl to engage in sexual activity while he watched her via a computer connection has escaped a prison sentence.
Ravi Prakash had pleaded guilty at Warwick Crown Court to six charges of causing a child to engage in sexual activity.
He also admitted attempting to arrange or facilitate the commission of a child sex offence and three offences of engaging in sexual activity in the presence of a child.
But the 28-year-old, of St Helens Road, Swansea, South Wales, who had spent almost two weeks in custody after failing to co-operate with a pre-sentence report, escaped being jailed.
Instead, Judge Marten Coates imposed a three-year community order, with three years supervision and a condition that Prakash takes part in a sex offender group work programme.
Prosecutor Ian Speed said Prakash ‘met’ the 13-year-old Rugby girl on an adult internet chat site in October 2011, and Prakash said that in their early messages he believed she was an adult.
But they then started to communicating via Skype, and as their conversations progressed she had informed him that she was in fact only 13.
Some time later the girl told Prakash of her 14th birthday, so he could have been in no doubt about her age.
Despite that Prakash, who had been making comments of an intimate nature, had asked her to pose naked for him in front of a camera while he watched via his Skype connection.
The two also engaged in sexual actvity while the other watched and Prakash tried to persuade the girl to meet him so they could kiss.
But in February last year the girl’s parents came across entries on her computer and reported their concerns to the police, which led to Prakash’s arrest.
When he was questioned Prakash claimed he believed the girl was 19 and denied being attracted to children.
Mr Speed added that in a statement the girl spoke of how easy it had been to get onto the chat site despite her age, and that she had found it flattering that someone was interested in her.
Sentencing Prakash and ordering him to register as a sex offender for five years, Judge Coates told him: “You pretended to be sympathetic, but you were predatory.”
