Febuary 2011

Paedophile freed by court of appeal

A paedophile from Bath jailed indefinitely for sexually assaulting a 12-year-old girl in a supermarket has been freed on appeal after senior judges said he should not have been given such an open-ended sentence.

Steven Grice, whose address was given as Grosvenor Place, had committed a number of sex offences before the incident in an Asda store in October 2009, London’s Appeal Court heard.

The 30-year-old had been put behind bars indefinitely for public protection – a term almost identical to a life sentence – at Wolverhampton Crown Court in September last year, after admitting sexual assault on a child under 13.

But judges sitting at the Court of Appeal replaced the open-ended sentence with a conventional two-year term, effectively freeing Grice from prison.

The court heard Grice had been in the Asda store at Tipton in the West Midlands with his father when he went off to buy some cheese as an excuse to wander off alone.

He then sought out his 12-year-old victim, who was with her parents, and patted her on the bottom three times after she became separated from her family.

The schoolgirl immediately burst into tears and told her father what had happened, and he began looking for Grice.

Grice meanwhile returned to his father and asked for the car keys, saying he felt unwell.

But he then became involved in an argument with another shopper and – when security officers intervened – was identified by the victim.

The court heard Grice had 13 previous convictions for sex offences – which the sentencing judge said amounted to an “extremely troubling and seedy history” – and included indecent exposure and public indecency.

In April 2009, just months before the supermarket attack, he was convicted of sexual assault on a woman and exposure and given a two-and-a-half year suspended sentence.

He had also previously been banned from having any unsupervised contact with anyone under 18.

His lawyers argued the indefinite jail term was “excessive”.

Allowing the appeal, Sir Hugh Bennett said that, although this was a serious offence, the open-ended sentence was not justified, even after taking into account Grice’s previous convictions.

The court heard that, as Grice has already served a year and four months in jail, he would be released immediately.