British judge lets paedophile go free and says: buy a bike to cheer up victim

A judge refused to jail a convicted paedophile for another offence and ordered him to pay his latest victim, a six-year-old girl, enough money to buy a new bicycle to cheer herself up. Relatives reacted angrily as Judge Julian Hall imposed a suspended sentence on Eric Cole, 71, who had previously been imprisoned for abusing a 12-year-old child. Hate messages and a threat of a vigilante attack on Cole were posted on a local newspaper website which reported the judge’s remarks yesterday.

The judge told Cole to pay the girl £250 compensation, saying: “If it buys her a nice new bicycle, that’s the sort of thing that might cheer her up.” He added: “In criminal terms, what you did was quite mild but the effects were serious.”

Alan Maines, for the prosecution, had told Oxford Crown Court  that the girl's mother had caught Cole in her garden in the Barton area of Oxford in July last year. “Cole was holding her waistband and was pushing his hands down her trousers,” Mr Maines said on Thursday.

Cole had previously been jailed for 15 months in 1998 for sexually assaulting a 12-year-old girl.

The judge's sentence led to cries from the public gallery for Cole to be sent back to prison. 

“I hear the calls," Judge Hall said,  but I am convinced in my own mind this is the best way to protect girls under 16 from the hands of this man.” 

Cole was given a nine-month sentence, suspended for two years. He was also given a sexual offences prevention order, which makes it illegal for him to be alone with a child under 16 for five years and requires him to attend a sexual offenders' programme. This type of restraining order was introduced in 1997. Breaches are punishable by imprisonment.

Judge Hall, 68, said that if he had imposed a jail term, Cole would be unlikely to receive treatment available to him in the community. “If you are not to do this sort of thing again, then you need help,” the Oxford Mail reported him as saying. “The greater chance of children being protected from you in the long term is a Sexual Offenders’ Prevention Order. I want to keep you away from small children.”

Dee Connolly, in mitigation, said Cole, now living in Church Street, Bedford, was a carer for his elderly mother and had shown remorse.

Judge Hall has been a circuit judge for 21 years. He is married to Professor Ingrid Lunt of Oxford University, a world authority on child development, psychology and special education.

One message on the Oxford Mail's website read: “The thing is, thanks to the OM, his face is now public and I am pretty sure the chavs in Barton will be paying him a few visits. I hope I don't cross paths with him.”

The judge made headlines last year when he left a court mid-hearing in tears at a mother’s tribute to a grown-up daughter killed in a car crash. A legal expert who knows Judge Hall defended his record and his sentencing of Cole. "This is an experienced judge who has been dealing with sexual cases for at least 20 years and knows what he is doing," the expert said.

Report here


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