Porn warning to parents after teen who grew up watching explicit videos repeatedly rapes child

Parents have been warned to monitor their children’s internet use after a boy who started watching pornography at the age of 12 went on to repeatedly rape a child. William Nicholson, now 19, is said to have used his victim to “act out” sexual desires.

Nicholson started showing the girl - a primary school pupil - pornographic videos and began abusing her when he was 14, Teesside Crown Court heard. The girl kept the ordeal secret until 2015, when she told a family friend about what had happened and the police were called.

Judge Peter Armstrong said Nicholson’s pornography viewing had influenced his behavior, according to the Daily Mail. He may have been acting out scenes from pornography he had viewed on his X-box, the judge added.

“One of the remarkable pieces of evidence in the case was that he had started looking at pornography at the age of 12. It almost beggars belief. It is behavior where it is experimenting or curious, and perhaps acting out what he had seen using [the girl] as an object to do that.

“It is a warning to parents, generally, to monitor their children’s activities rather than them being left to their own devices in their bedrooms. I can’t believe it didn’t have an effect on him,” the judge said.  

Before the trial began, the victim said she finds it hard to trust people. “I trust my mum, but I find it hard to tell people personal things. All of this has made me have nightmares. I cry in my sleep, and when I wake up, I feel scared.”

After the trial she said: “When this is happening, I felt really confused. I knew it was wrong, but I didn’t know how to put it into words. Now, I really understand it was rape, and he had no right to do that to me. I’m happy that people have believed me, and the jury believed me.”

Nicholson was sentenced to six years at a young offenders institute. He was found guilty of two charges of rape, attempted rape, two indecent assaults and causing or inciting a child to engage in sexual activity.

He was also put on the sex offenders register for life, and forbidden to work with children. An indefinite Sexual Harm Prevention Order was also imposed, prohibiting Nicholson from having unsupervised contact with under 16s and restricting his computer and internet use.