The Lord Chief Justice has failed us all miserably by cutting the sentence of this vile child rapist

By Anna Smith for MailOnline
Updated: 08:45 EST, 5 September 2012

No longer serving life: Paedophile Paul Wilson has had his sentence cut by 18 months because a judge thought it would encourage other sex predators to plead guilty

Child sex monster Paul Wilson filmed himself raping a three-year-old girl.

You don’t have to be a parent for those very words to send a shiver down your spine.

The sickening sex attack on a toddler by the twisted nursery worker is not just beyond evil, it is beyond our comprehension.

And we are entitled to expect that society will be protected from beasts like 21-year-old Wilson until his dying breath.

Surely at the very least that is not too much to ask.

But no.

Britain’s most senior judge has just chopped 18 months off the 15 years minimum term handed down to depraved Wilson, jailed last year when he admitted twice raping the little girl at the nursery where he worked.

The reason given by Lord Chief Justice Lord Judge: That reducing his sentence might encourage other paedophiles to admit their crimes.

If there has ever been a more ridiculous and outrageous ruling from a law lord then I have never heard of it.

And far worse than that, it is a ruling that will directly impact on the future safety children.

Because you can guarantee that Wilson – whenever he is freed – will go on to rape and assault children, because that sick obsession is what drives him.

Who knows, he may, like many other paedophiles, go on to murder.

So, far from encouraging other paedophiles to admit their crimes, this disgraceful judgement in itself could actually put more children in danger.

Because the monsters like Wilson, who silently trawl the internet and prowl the streets in search of children to molest, will be encouraged that the highest judge in the land has shown leniency towards a child sex beast.

What on earth was the Lord Judge thinking about?

A year ago, when Wilson was arrested, the country was horrified to learn that a trusted nursery worker had preyed on a little girl who should have been protected by the strict vetting guidelines governing people who work with children.

Rapist: As well as abusing a toddler, Wilson blackmailed 22 girls aged between 12 and 16 into performing sex acts for him online

As details of his crimes unfolded, it transpired that during the abuse covering an 18 month period, he not only raped the little girl, but also blackmailed 22 girls, aged between 12 and 16 into performing sex acts for him online, having groomed them by posing as a teenage boy or a scout for a modeling agency.

And that is only the ones he admitted in court. We will probably never know how long he has been abusing children.

This was not some random pervert who stepped out of the shadows. Wilson was only 20 at the time of his arrest. He is clearly a serial child sex abuser destined for a lifetime of lusting after children.

At his original sentencing, Mrs Justice Macur called Wilson’s crimes ‘chilling, vile and depraved’, telling him: ‘You have humiliated and corrupted and defiled.’

But less than a year later, his lawyer went to court arguing that by pleading guilty he had spared a jury from having to see his depraved film.

And shockingly, the Lord Chief Justice Lord Judge accepted this, cutting Wilson’s minimum sentence by 18 months, and telling the court that this would encourage other paedophiles to admit their crimes. 

Of the guilty plea, Lord Judge  said: ‘We accept, that this step was taken to enable the distraught parents of the child to know that there would be no trial. They knew none of this repellent movie of the little girl would ever be shown in public. No one would ever see that little girl’s face.’

'Appalling': Wilson worked at the Little Stars Nursery in Birmingham, where he admitted orally raping the youngster

No wonder the grandmother of the child raped by Wilson is outraged and has branded the ruling ‘disgusting’.

What kind of message is Lord Judge sending out by this scandalous decision?

He is completely missing the point.

Paedophiles aren’t people who are a bit creepy.

They are warped maniacs who steal the innocence of a child and who ruin lives, and more than that, they all too often go on to murder children.

As a reporter I have covered too many court cases where a paedophile was freed after a lenient sentence and went on to kill a child. It happens time and again.

That is the central issue the judge should have been addressing.

He should have used his powerful voice to send a message that there will be no hiding place for paedophiles when it comes to British justice.

What the public want and should expect is for there to be no grey area when it comes to child sex abuse.

But frankly, Lord Judge has completely failed in his task, and he has fallen so short of what is expected of him that the powers that be should be questioning the competence of this decision.

We all know that judges live in a different world from the rest of us.

We continually see that from the soft-touch sentences they hand down to thugs, drug dealers, and more often than not, to sex offenders.

'Chilling, vile and depraved': Wilson was able to target the child at Little Stars Nursery despite strict vetting guidelines governing people who work with children

They don’t seem to understand that we live in a world where because of the internet, paedophilia is thriving worldwide, giving anonymity to sex beasts and linking them to paedophile rings across the world where they can latch onto child porn and download sickening images of kids and babies being abused.

Children are at the mercy of international people trafficking. We regularly hear of kids coming here to be used as sex slaves. And there are more and more cases in the UK where children are abused by people within their own community.

What the government and the law lords should be doing is finding ways to seek the perverts out and put them behind bars.

They should be creating new laws to protect our children from them, not ways to make life easier for them or to consider their human rights.

Obviously we cannot keep paedophiles in prison forever.

So we should seriously be considering chemical castration, because the facts have shown that rehabilitation for sex offenders simply doesn’t work.

Wilson raped a precious little girl whose parents entrusted her into a place of safety.

He is a man who can never, ever be left alone with a child as long as he lives.

We have seen dozens of cases where paedophiles released from prison are housed next to schools or in blocks of flats where families live. They are supposed to be monitored, but it never happens and they go on to offend again. And, tragically, some go on to murder.

If ever there is a benchmark case for chemical castration for child sex attackers it is the case of Paul Wilson.

It works in other countries and in some states in America chemical castration has been used for years.

Wilson’s case was a clear opportunity for the court to make a statement that would matter and make our children safer.

Lord Chief Justice Judge has failed us all miserably.

Anna Smith's latest crime novel, To Tell The Truth, was published last week by Quercus