A MARRIED Hampshire father has been jailed for 18 months for abducting and indecently assaulting a teenager he met through an Internet chatroom.
John Wooler was caught when the girl’s parents opened a parcel of underwear he had sent her in the post, a court was told.
Wooler, 46, used a false name when he befriended the 14-year-old by asking about her favourite pop music and other interests but admitted he was an adult married man in his forties, it was said.
Gloucester Crown Court was told he had driven two hours to pick her up, took her to remote location where they spent an hour in his car and he gave her a passionate kiss.
Wooler, of Myers Close, Swanmore, admitted abducting and indecently assaulting the girl on November 16, 2001. He was charged with abduction because the girl’s parents had not given Wooler or their daughter permission for the meeting to take place.
Judge Gabriel Hutton told him: “You, a man in your forties, should be absolutely ashamed of yourself in carrying on this way with a girl of 14. She was obviously entirely willing but that is no excuse whatsoever because children have to be protected from themselves.
“I consider this is so serious that you have to be punished to show other people what is the likely result if they commit offences of this seriousness.”
Wooler, who has been married since 1975 and has three grown-up children, will also be placed on the sex offenders’ register for five years.
Earlier, Toby Halliwell, prosecuting, told the court that Wooler and the girl had met in a lay-by near her home in Cheltenham before driving to a more remote stopping place.
They sat talking and the girl was drinking alcohol. They then moved into the car’s back seats and she lay with her head on his lap, Mr Halliwell said.
Wooler became concerned when the girl’s parents started sending her text messages trying to find out where she was, he added.
He said: “He decided he would have to draw their meeting to a conclusion. At this point he kissed her. The kiss is described as a passionate kiss.”
After their meeting they continued to phone each other for a general chat and on at least one occasion the conversations were of a sexual nature, the court was told.
James Counsell, mitigating, said Wooler had used the false first name James but had not deceived the girl in any other way.
He said: “During the course of their meeting, towards the end of it, they kissed each other once. That act was an entirely voluntary one. There was no suggestion of any compulsion.”
The period since his arrest had been difficult and painful for the family, Mr Counsell said.
“He is currently unemployed. The home is on the market for sale and he has no financial resources at all,” he said.
Mr Counsell had asked the judge to give Wooler a long community rehabilitation order coupled with sex offender programmes and conditions.
