Pervert jailed after having sex with 13-year-old girl

Sheffield Crown Court heard today, Friday, July 9, how David Woodcock contacted the youngster on Facebook and their conversation became sexual and he asked to meet her.

Judge David Dixon told Woodcock: “There was quite clearly a grooming process here. Chatting to a 13-year-old girl, by a man of your age, is worrying in itself.”

Andrew Bailey, prosecuting, said Woodcock met the girl, who cannot be named for legal reasons, in Cudworth, Barnsley, before walking into woods where he groped her and had oral sex and sex with her.

Woodcock, aged 38, of Tower Street, Worsbrough Common, Barnsley, pleaded guilty to two counts of sexual activity with a child after the incident in April, 2019.

Vanessa Saxton, defending, said: “He recognises and understands his behaviour was both unlawful when he was speaking to this child and when he met this child and for what happened.

"He still now cannot give any indication to himself or others who have met him in the proceedings as to why he involved himself in this way.”

Judge Dixon sentenced Woodcock to 62 months of custody and placed him under a Sexual Harm Prevention Order for 15 years.

He told the defendant: "The reality is, for reasons you cannot understand or explain, you sought to abuse a child.”

Woodcock, who the court heard has no previous convictions, was also made subject to an indefinite restraining order.