The 40-year-old met the young girl online and was aware of her age when he arranged to meet her.<\/p>\n
The ex-soldier travelled 130 miles from the Midlands to Meols in Wirral, Merseyside, to carry out the attack in a field.<\/p>\n
The girl thought that Crowe was of school age and he offered to buy her a strawberry milkshake at McDonald\u2019s when she said she would be late for a meeting after school.<\/p>\n
It was later found by police experts that he had been using a dating chat service called Anti-chat to speak to a number of other underage girls.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, after admitting the rape of a child under 13 and sexual grooming, Crowe, of Kirkdale Road in Coventry, was jailed for eight years, with an additional year on licence, at\u00a0Liverpool Crown Court.<\/p>\n
Crowe was an emergency preparedness manager for the ambulance service, responsible for planning medical cover for major events.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis case represents what must be every parent\u2019s worst nightmare,\u201d said Judge Alan Conrad, QC.<\/p>\n
\u201cTheir child, their innocent child, going on the internet and meeting somebody like you, who I categorise in the circumstances of this case as a sexual predator.\u201d<\/p>\n
Prosecutor Martine Snowdon said the offence, which took place on June 19, left the girl feeling \u201cguilty, embarrassed and confused\u201d.<\/p>\n
Ms Snowdon said, \u201cShe told police she had received a Facebook friend request from somebody called Adrian, and after chatting to that person he asked for her number, she gave it to him and they began texting each other.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe said the profile didn\u2019t have a picture and she thought she was chatting with a schoolmate.\u201d<\/p>\n
The court heard that Crowe, after the attack, he drove her back to where he had picked her up and told her \u201cnot to tell anyone\u201d.<\/p>\n
When Police arrested Crowe in a Pizza Hut in Coventry after his DNA was found on the girl, he said, \u201cIs this about the girl? She told me she was 20.\u201d<\/p>\n
He later admitted sexual contact with the victim and claimed he was \u201cso embarrassed\u201d when he found out her real age.<\/p>\n
However, messages to other girls on the Anti-chat site included, \u201cAre you legal or jailbait?\u201d<\/p>\n
He also asked, \u201cWould you be OK doing it with me?\u201d, when talking to a 15-year-old.<\/p>\n
Ben Jones, defending Crowe, said he was an Army veteran and had worked in a pressurised job with the ambulance service.<\/p>\n
He said, \u201cIt\u2019s extremely hard to rationalise how a man of this age, of previous good character, good employment and in a supportive relationship should fall into such extreme behaviour almost overnight.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Jones said his client was described by his partner, who was standing by him, as reacting badly to coming off a high-dose of anti-depressants and that he had \u201cnever shown any sign of\u201d interest in under-age girls before.<\/p>\n
Crowe was also ordered to sign the sex offenders register for life and handed an indefinite Sexual Harm Prevention Order, severely restricting his internet use.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Adrian Crowe was described as \u201cevery parent\u2019s worst nightmare\u201d as he was jailed for eight years for\u00a0raping a schoolgirl aged 12. The 40-year-old met the young girl online and was aware of her age when he arranged to meet her. The ex-soldier travelled 130 miles from the Midlands to Meols in Wirral, Merseyside, to carry […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":101,"featured_media":24250,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37,112],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/101"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24249"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24249\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}