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10
Feb
Harrogate man jailed for catalogue of sex offences against young girl
A Harrogate man has been jailed for a catalogue of sexual offences against a young girl including meeting her for sex.
Lewis Grice-Meadows, 19, appeared at York Crown Court today (February 10) when he received a three-year jail sentence after he admitted five separate offences including sexual activity with a child, meeting the girl for sex following grooming and making indecent images of her.
Prosecutor Matthew Moore-Taylor said that Grice-Meadows came to the police’s attention after the victim’s mother checked her phone and found messages suggesting her daughter had been sexually groomed.
When interviewed by police, the girl told officers that Grice-Meadows had claimed to be “15, soon to turn 16” when the offences began, when in fact he was 18 at the time.
The girl, who was from a different part of the country, was also a teenager but substantially younger than Grice-Meadows and under the age of consent.
They started messaging each other around autumn 2024 on WhatsApp, Snapchat and ‘iMessage’, a secure messaging app where the bulk of the conversations occurred.
Mr Moore-Taylor said there was a “substantial” number of messages of a sexual nature, including sexual images.
He added:
It’s apparent that the defendant understood (the victim’s) age, there being various references to school and explicit reference to her being a child.
The two would meet regularly and have sex.
He said that Grice-Meadows lured or “induced” the girl to Harrogate, where he lived in a bedsit, although she was barely in her teens.
The prosecutor added:
More visits followed and on the second or third occasion, she described feeling pressured to have sex with him.
He told her, ‘Come on, everyone’s doing it’, and she relented to that pressure. It was plain from her demeanour in (police) interview that her understanding of sexual matters was limited.
As a “means to induce her visits”, Grice-Meadows, of Mayfield Grove, would buy the girl train tickets so she could travel to meet him. He also bought her gifts for that same reason such as alcohol, clothes, sweets and jewellery.
In the many messages between them, Grice-Meadows urged her to take the contraceptive pill “which she did”.
He also sent her “explicit videos and photos of (herself) and of the two (of them) together having sex”, added Mr Moore-Taylor.
‘I have anxiety which seems to be worse than ever’
Grice-Meadows was arrested on Christmas Day 2024 and analysis of his phone showed he had made or “produced” dozens of indecent photos and videos of the girl, who can’t be named for legal reasons.
Six of those videos were rated Category A, the most serious level.
He was charged with engaging in penetrative sexual activity with a child, meeting her with the intention of committing a sexual offence following sexual grooming on at least two occasions, and three counts of making indecent images of the girl. Those three charges related to Category A, B and C photos and videos of the girl.
At a plea hearing in October last year, Grice-Meadows admitted all the offences which occurred during a period of about two months in 2024.
At today’s sentence hearing, the prosecution read out victim-impact statements from the girl and her mother.
The young victim said that Grice-Meadows’ offences had had “deeply impacted my teenage years”.
She now found it hard to trust people which had “restricted…the independence I once had”.
She said:
Emotionally, I’m struggling. I have anxiety which seems to be worse than ever.
Her mother said that when she saw the messages on her daughter’s phone she felt “physically sick”.
She added:
I can still see those images in my head. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to delete them from my mind.
She said her daughter had had her “confidence stripped” by Grice-Meadows’ callous actions.
She said that her daughter had since turned into “a shell of the girl she used to be”.
She added:
This has been a steep and horrible journey for us. It’s been the most harrowing year of our lives.
'The baggage of a very difficult life'
Defence barrister Andrew Stranex said that Grice-Meadows had been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder which affected how he interacted with people.
He said that his client, who had been working in a supermarket warehouse, had endured a “significantly disrupted childhood and very difficult upbringing characterised by isolation”, having lived in various locations including Australia where he went to finishing school but wasn’t able to stay in the country due to visa issues.
Mr Stranex added:
What is clear is that when he came back to this country, he had got to the stage where he was approaching adulthood but was carrying with him the baggage of a very difficult life.
He said that, despite Grice-Meadows’ debilitating condition, “there is an acceptance by him that what he did was wrong”.
He added that Grice-Meadows, who hitherto had no criminal record, had even told the girl about “the problems he was having with his employers”, which made it apparent that he was a working adult.
York Crown Court
Judge Sean Morris, the Recorder of York, said that despite knowing the victim’s age and the fact she was a schoolgirl, Grice-Meadows had groomed her with gifts of sweets, alcohol, clothes and jewellery.
He noted that in one of the messages, Grice-Meadows had asked her if she was taking contraceptive pills.
“You were planning to have sex with her and you took moving images of that sex which you shared with her,” added the judge.
He told the Harrogate man:
It is right to say that you have had a very difficult upbringing. You have not had any real stability. You were, for a while, home-educated, no doubt because of your problems and school was difficult. You have been an isolated young man all your life.
Mr Morris also noted a psychological report which confirmed that Grice-Meadows was “in the severe range of social deficits associated with autistic spectrum disorder”.
He said that due to this diagnosis and how the condition affected Grice-Meadows’ interactions with others, it reduced his culpability “somewhat”.
He added, however:
You accept now that that what you did was wrong. Your offending is extremely serious.
Due to his age, medical condition, guilty pleas and lack of previous convictions, Grice-Meadows was given a reduced three-year jail sentence, of which he will serve half behind bars before being released on prison licence.
In addition, he was made subject to a five-year sexual-harm prevention order and placed on the sex-offenders’ register for an indefinite period.
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