Judge Issues Chilling Warning To Parents After Teen Who Began Watching Porn Aged 12 Is Jailed

A judge has urged parents to monitor their children's internet activity after a teenager who watched pornography when he was just 12-years-old was jailed for repeatedly raping a child.

William Nicholson, who is now 19, watched explicit adult content when he was just a child and then began abusing a primary school pupil to satisfy his sexual urges aged just 14.

The girl kept her ordeal secret until 2015 where she then told a family friend about what had happened and the police were then called. 


Judge Peter Armstrong said that Nicholson, from Darlington, County Durham, may have been acting out scenes from pornography which he had viewed on his Xbox.


He told Teesside Crown Court: '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 behaviour where it is experimenting or curious and perhaps acting out what he had seen using [the girl] as an object to do that.'

'Well, 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.'

Chris Baker, mitigating, said Nicholson had been heavily influenced by adults from the time he stopped going to school seven years ago.

Nicholson was sentenced to six years at a young offenders institute after 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.