Judge slams 'absurd' sentencing rules

A judge criticised his lack of sentencing powers after hearing how a young boy was groomed for sex, abducted and sold into a week-long "blur" of sexual abuse, it can be reported today.

Mr Justice Holland said the maximum seven-year sentence for people living off the earnings of prostitutes was "quite absurd".

He called for the director of the Crown Prosecution Service to be made aware of the issue after a 14-year-old boy was groomed for work as a prostitute over two years before being abducted and sold to a man with clients across the country.

Mr Justice Holland, sitting at Leeds Crown Court on Tuesday, said: "This man provides prostitutes to men who then commit the act of buggery and I don't have the power to sentence him.

"It's really quite absurd.

"These cases are rarely as serious as this, but this case demonstrates the seriousness of it at its extreme.

"It's extraordinary the judge is hamstrung in this way, to seven years, when it might be 10 or even life."

The court heard Nathan Eyre, 38, of Leeds, groomed the vulnerable 14-year-old, who cannot be named for legal reasons, for work as an under-age male prostitute before he was abducted and sold to Raymond Hawthorne in October last year.

Mr Justice Holland sentenced him to just five years because he had to take into account the guilty plea. Eyre was also given three years for conspiring with Hawthorne to sell the boy.

Hawthorne, 40, of Manchester, admitted abduction, indecency with a child, conspiring to live off the earnings of a male prostitute and conspiring to commit indecent assaults, and was sent down for seven years.

Leslie Loram, 50, of Rochdale - "one of Hawthorne's best customers" - was jailed for three and a half years after admitting two counts of buggery and one of indecent assault on the 14-year-old boy.

Sentencing Eyre to a total of eight years, Mr Justice Holland said: "The criminality is really quite breathtaking, it was complete exploitation, selling (the boy) to a man with national connections for extensive further exploitation.

"From the victim impact statement, it is clear the consequences are still continuing, the mental and psychological scars may be with him for the rest of his life."

Neil Davey QC, for the prosecution, told the court the young victim "serviced so many clients in so many parts of the country and in so many different ways it became impossible for him to remember how many men he had serviced or in what circumstances.

"It all just blurred into one week-long episode of sexual abuse."