Very interesting story - tabloid fury of course; the regular outraged women quoted; but the facts seem to be that a 12 year old girl looked absolutely 19 (and a single mother) and convinced the 25 year old that she was who she pretended to be.

Because she's under age, he had to be found guilty on four counts of rape ("you've got to have consent", as the song says, and under 16 cannot consent in law) but was released by Judge Jennifer Kershaw, who sounds amazingly brave and intelligent for a British judge.

A 12 month conditional discharge.

Which rings us back to the "age of consent" discussion and the inevitable conclusion - every individual case is different and really should be judged accordingly.

Statutory Rape is another of those weird charges which defy the fundamentals of British Law. It was always the case that for a crime to be committed there must be both 'mens rea' (intention) and 'actus reus' (to act upon that intention). Crimes were always committed in the mind first. If there was no intention there was no crime. This meant that if a man had a sexual relationship with someone he genuinely believed to be of legal age, his intentions were within the law and he was comitting no crime. Statutory Rape bypasses 'mens rea'.

It is one thing to be ignorant of the law (and it is no defence) and another to be ignorant of the facts.

This judge has obviouly applied the spirit of the law rather than the rigid letter. This is surely the way forward.

and a very competent and good judge who no doubt will get the usual cries of "out of touch with community concerns" ( despite seeing daily more of the horrors of life than those complaining would see in a lifetime).

The saddest aspects ( apart from having his life ripped to shreds over the trial) he is deemd a "rapist" when he is in reality not, and now has a criminal record.

JK, I hope you will post my reply

The Judge really had to follow 'the letter of the law' in this case because charities like the NSPCC and also, in particular, a female nulabor Scottish Baroness whose name I forget, have been waging a very public campaign to force judges not to make ANY allowances for cases where the man believed the girl to be over 16 when they had sex.

And do you know the reason why they leave humanity and justice behind and are so determined to have a 'no excuses' policy, (whilst simultaneously raising the age of consent and increasing the penalties for underage sex)?
It's basically, the middle-aged women who largely run these childrens charities (and Blair's 'babes')looking after their own sexual interests and trying to ensure that no sane man will even look at a woman under 25 for fear that she might turn out to be underage (which at the moment is effectively under 18 but probably soon will slowly be raised to 21 if the charities and politicians can get away with it).