Child molester caught by sending victim message

Jay Johnson was found guilty of child sex offences

A child molester who triggered his young victim's trauma by messaging her about the abuse years later has been jailed for three and half years.

Jay Johnson was a teenager when he subjected the girl to sexual abuse, Newcastle Crown Court heard.

After being convicted of groping a second girl, Johnson, now 23, sent his first victim a message asking if she remembered what he had done to her, which prompted her to report it to police, the court heard.

Johnson, from Alnwick, Northumberland, denied five child sex offences but was found guilty by jurors.

He was given a community order in 2020 for sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl in 2018, Judge Robert Spragg said, with the court viewing it then as an "isolated incident".

But unbeknown to prosecutors, Johnson had also been molesting a younger girl, the judge said.

'Ridiculous excuses'

The second lot of offences came to light when Johnson sent the girl a message about his actions in 2023, which was also a breach of a sexual harm prevention order (SHPO) made in 2020, the court heard.

In the message, Johnson asked the girl if she could "remember what they were doing", the court heard.

The message was "highly traumatic" with the victim then reporting the abuse to police, the judge said, with the girl saying she had feared she would not have been believed before then.

Judge Spragg said it was "very worrying" Johnson felt it appropriate to contact the victim, with the sex offender then lying to jurors and "coming up with ridiculous excuses" for sending the message.

Johnson posed a "high risk" of sexual offending, the judge said.

He was jailed for three years for the sexual offences against a child and a further six months for breaching the SHPO.

Johnson was also made subject to another SHPO for 10 years and must sign the sex offender register indefinitely.