Febuary 2012

Four years’ jail for ‘sexual predator’

A ‘SEXUAL predator’ who targeted underage girls for his own gratification has been jailed for four years.

Paulo Colombo, of Beatrice Street, Gorse Hill, pursued the girls, the youngest being 10, though internet messaging before meeting them.

The 19-year-old drug dealer then used his charms as ‘a Romeo’ to pester and persuade them to have sex with him.

He even told a 14-year-old girl she would never see him again if she didn’t lose her virginity with him in a park as she made her way to school one morning.

Colombo had initially claimed he had no idea what he was doing was wrong as he had just arrived in the country from his native Brazil.

Despite being warned about his activity by the police, the South American continued on his quest to have sex with as many young girls as possible.

Now not only has he been jailed for four years but he will be on licence for an extra year on his release. As well as registering as a sex offender for life and being banned from working with children he is subject to a sexual offences prevention order restricting his contact with underage girls for ten years.

He served a six month jail term while on remand for the sex offences after being convicted at trial of dealing cannabis and an ecstasy substitute drug from his Swindon flat.

Colombo first came to the attention of the police in October 2009 when he met the 10-year-old girl at a playground in Parks area and got her to indecently touch him.

He was released on bail by the police having been warned about the law in the UK.

During the summer of 2010, shortly before he turned 18, he started seeing a 15-year-old girl and, using ‘an element of coercion’, had sex with her on a number of occasions.

While that was going on he also pursued one of her friends, who was also 15, and persuaded her to have sex with him.

At the same time he also engaged in a campaign of ‘grooming’ a 14-year-old girl with internet messaging.

He made her feel guilty for resisting him and said he she would not see him again if she didn’t have sex with him in a Chippenham park on her way to school.

They also had sex at his sister’s flat in Chippenham where he used his mobile phone to video what took place.

The final matters took place at his Swindon flat where he had sex with a teenage girl who was over 16 but in front of her 12-year-old friend.

Colombo denied nine counts of sexual activity with a child, one of sex in the presence of a minor and one of making an indecent picture of a child. On the second day of the trial he admitted two of the sexual activity counts and was convicted of all the other charges by a jury.

Marcus Davey, defending, told the court his client acted as an immature teenage boy.

“The reality is he has played the rather charming Romeo character to young girls who are susceptible to his charms,” he said.

Jailing him Judge Euan Ambrose said: “It is clear to me that you find post pubescent girls sexually attractive.

“You also find them to be impressionable, easily manipulated, easily persuaded and pressured by you into sexual activity which they had initially not wanted but which they were persuaded by you to engage in.

“The prosecution case against you as opened and maintained in trial is that you are a sexual predator and to the extent that the description I have just given features, the description of sexual predator, I agree.”