January 2001

Caretaker’s sex shame with schoolgirl

A SCHOOL caretaker had sex with a 13-year-old girl while her friend sat on the bed and watched.

Stephen Garrity, 30, of Bright Street, Radcliffe, admitted unlawful sexual intercourse with a girl aged under 16 years and was jailed for 12 months at Bolton Crown Court. Garrity had taken the girls to McDonald’s, let them drink alcohol and then lured the 13-year-old into bed after they had watched a pornographic film concerning lesbians.

The girl’s mother left the court in tears when the details of the sex assault were heard at the court.

Garrity was sacked from his job as caretaker at a school in the Bury area once he admitted to police that he had sex with the girl. He was arrested when the girl told her mother after she had been taken to hospital with severe stomach pains.

A pregnancy test proved negative. Judge Reginald Lockett jailed Garrity, who was of previous good character, for 12 months and ordered him to sign the Sex Offenders’ Register for 10 years. Prosecutor Jeremy Grout-Smith said Garrity got to know the girl and her friends when he lived at a house in Ramsbottom.

The girl and her friend used to visit Garrity regularly and he often took them out in his car and sometimes they visited a McDonald’s. On November 14 last year they had been to the fair in Bury followed by a trip to McDonald’s.

On returning to his house they had all watched the pornographic video and later all three went upstairs to his bedroom. The girl told police that she had been flirting with Garrity and they ended up in bed while her friend sat at the bottom of the bed watching. The girl subsequently visited Garrity after the incident but nothing sexual happened. He was finally arrested when the girl told her mother.

Her mother said her daughter had been quiet and withdrawn since the incident. The teenager and her friend were interviewed on video where they confirmed what had happened. When police searched the house they found a sex instruction card with Garrity’s face on it along with the video.

Defending, Andrew Marrs said that Garrity had been frank with police when arrested but said the girl had told him she was 15 and he believed that she was sexually experienced. He said he had not given them alcohol and that they had found the pornographic video under his bed and started watching it without his permission.

But he agreed that he didn’t stop them watching the film and that he knew that it was wrong to have sex with a girl he knew to be under 16-years-old. Judge Reginald Lockett said it was a serious crime as Garrity was a 30-year-old man and the girl was only 13-years-old.

He said he had a duty to the public and to the girl’s distraught parents to impose a custodial sentence.