A CHILD rapist who bribed his victim with the promise of tickets to see One Direction if she had sex with him has been jailed for 18 years.

50-year-old David Whatmore's abuse - which lasted two years - was described by a Bolton Crown Court judge yesterday as "a campaign of rape".

Whatmore began indecently touching the girl when she was 11 years old, Amanda Johnson, prosecuting, told the court.

Then the grooming progressed to raping her when she was aged 12 and 13 – only ending in February last year when the girl’s horrified mother looked at her daughter’s Facebook account and found sexual messages sent to her from Whatmore.

The teenager told police that Whatmore had offered her gifts, including money, pets, concert tickets and singing lessons.

“But you have to have sex with me in return,” he told her.

Miss Johnson said Whatmore would rape the girl regularly, about once a month, sometimes in the back of his transit van and on other occasions at his home.

Whatmore even devised a coded message to inform her when he wanted sex, telling her to “take the dogs for a walk” or “do the dogs”.

“She was a fan of One Direction and he pretended to have VIP tickets and used that to bribe her to have sex with him,” said Miss Johnson.

On another occasion he sent her a message telling her to put on some “dressy up clothes” so she would look older than her age and they could go out to a bar in Bolton.

“The defendant demonstrated controlling and blackmail behaviour towards her,” said Miss Johnson.


MORE:


She added that his victim now suffers from severe depression and has had to have specialist counselling.

“She describes herself as having gone through hell and that is still ongoing,” said Miss Johnson.

The court was told that Whatmore, of Knightswood, Deane, had pleaded guilty to five counts of child rape and one of attempted rape on September 1 – the day his trial was due to start, but then attempted to change his plea, a move he later abandoned.

Katy Appleton, defending, said Whatmore, who has no previous convictions, is remorseful and accepts responsibility for his actions.

“This is someone who has identified a young girl and, in order for his own gratification, has bribed her with gifts in order to have sex,” said Judge Peter Davies.

Sentencing Whatmore, Judge Davies told him: “These are truly dreadful offences.

“It was, and I use this word advisedly, a campaign of rape.”

He added that Whatmore had used the girls’ love of One Direction to get her to have sex with him.

“Of course, there were no tickets and you manipulated her in a cruel way,” he said.

Whatmore was ordered to sign the sex offenders' register for life, banned for life from unsupervised contact with children under 16 and banned from contacting any child under 18 on social media.