A pastor who sexually abused a 13-year-old congregant from his church has been spared from jail following his court case at the Aylesbury Crown Court in the UK.
The pastor, 45-year-old Christopher Rose, is accused of biting the young girl’s ear in a sexual manner after he befriended her family, gaining their trust. The abuse was apparently so traumatic for the girl that she self-harmed on more than one occasion.
In sentencing the pastor to a mere 60 hours of community service, a small fine and a night curfew, Judge Sheridan said:
He was trusted in the family setting and then misused that position in relation to the daughter. I’m not going to stop him working as a pastor but I think my duty is to protect other young girls of that age from over-familiar treatment.
The allegations arose after the pastor, who became close with the girl’s parents, acting as a mentor to her mother and a source of advice for her father, was left alone with the young girl in January last year .
The court heard that at that time Rose nibbled the girl’s ear, traumatizing her deeply. Judge Sheridan continued: “You touched her in a sexual way. You did it in a way where you made it perfectly clear why you were doing it.”
Amazingly, it seems that Rose, a man of the Church, was also accused by police following his arrest of meeting a minor after grooming her, as well as four charges of engaging in a sex act with girls aged between 13-15.
Due to the fact that the Judge agreed that this was just a one-off, isolated incident, he let Rose off with a curfew for one month, a $500 fine and has instructed him to sign the Sex Offenders’ Register in the UK.
