July 2015: Now living in Bradford

September 2007

Serial sex predator finally locked up

A sexual predator who persistently targeted vulnerable young girls has been locked up for 18 months.

Christopher Lawson, 19, was caught kissing a 14-year-old girl at Bradford Interchange bus station in breach of a Sexual Offences Prevention Order.

March 2007

Sex offender avoids prison

A TEENAGER who enticed young girls into sexual activities has escaped jail.

Christopher Lawson, 18, of no fixed address, carried out the offences in January last year in the Chequerfield area of Pontefract.

At Leeds Crown Court on Friday, Judge Kerry MacGill handed him a three-year community order – with a condition to live at Ashdene, in Wakefield, a hostel which helps ex-offenders – and made him subject to a sexual offences prevention order (SOPO), with no time limit.

David Dixon, prosecuting, told the court that in January 2006, a 17-year-old Lawson lured two 12-year-old girls and a seven-year-old girl to fields and told them to wait by a fence.

He took one of the 12-year-olds away and told her to lift up her top so he could touch her breasts, before doing the same with the other 12-year-old girl.

Lawson then exposed himself and performed a lewd act in front of all three girls, but was eventually arrested after they told his then girlfriend.

He pleaded guilty on July 11 last year to two charges sexual assault of girls under 13 and two charges of causing or inciting a child under 13 to engage in sexual activity.

At a later hearing at Leeds Crown Court in October, Judge MacGill released Lawson to a bail hostel in Dewsbury on an interim SOPO to await sentencing.

But Mr Dixon told the court that two days after Lawson signed the order – which banned him from contact with females under 16 – he breached it with a 14-year-old schoolgirl.

Mr Dixon said Lawson bought alcohol for the girl, which they drank together, and then kissed outside his hostel.

But concerned members of staff at the hostel called the police and Lawson was again arrested for breaching the order.

The court heard he had previous convictions for cycling up to adult women, on three separate occasions, and grabbing either their breasts or bottoms before riding away.

Samuel Andrews, mitigating, said Lawson was aware he would be made subject to a SOPO.

He said: “If he commits further offences in the period of the order, he knows that the sentence of this court is likely to leave him with a life sentence. And that is a prospect that he is aware of and one he doesn’t wish to entertain.”

Judge MacGill told Lawson he would rather have sent him to Ashdene in October, and not the bail hostel, but beds there were “scarce.”

He said: “I released you on bail for a short period – four weeks. And what did you do? Went almost straight back to the kind of activities that got you here in the first place.”

He added: “Your offending has escalated from older women, who are more able to protect themselves, to young girls, who, particularly when drink is involved, are less able to do so.

“I want you to go to Ashdene to learn about your bevahiour and improve your attitude and to recognise there is the potential to commit serious sexual offences unless you are helped.”