May 2021

Mum, 26, had sex with boy, 15, after manipulating him with ‘sexually-charged’ texts after befriending parents

A mother who groomed an underage schoolboy after his parents helped her cope with a failing relationship in lockdown has been jailed.

Former care worker Laura Bardsley, 26, engaged the lad into sexual intercourse on at least 15 times while his family took pity on her problems with her partner.

As his parents offered her “support” she swapped “sexually charged” texts with their boy in the illegal tryst between June and September last year.

She started by sending Facebook messages which “at first appeared innocent” before Bardsley quizzed him on his “sexual preferences”.

She also told him “sexually explicit details” of her own relationship before inviting him round to see her new kittens while her partner was at work.

The victim’s mum noticed her son started “spending all of his free time at the defendant’s address” and “appeared to lose interest in his hobbies.”

Bardsley of Reddish, Gtr Manchester, admitted four charges of sexual activity with a child, harassment and possessing a prohibited item in prison.

She was today jailed for six years at Minshull Street crown court in Manchester.

The victim’s mum said in a statement: “I believe my boy was manipulated and tricked by that woman, and the anger that he showed focused on me.

“He began to truant from school and I felt I would never get back the son I knew.

“It’s only more recently he has learned to understand what happened and recognised he was groomed. 

“But it will take him a while to grasp this before he can put it behind him. 

“I’ve had problems with my own husband since this came out and it early became almost too much for our marriage to bear at one point.”

Minshull Street court heard how the boy would “often dress smartly” and “would stay late into the evening” at her home in Reddish.

The retired care worker said how much she loved him and even wrote a string of love letters when on holiday.

She Googled “unprotected sex” and “morning after pill” before visiting a hotel with him and on another occasion at home a neighbour spotted them kissing.

His parents grew “concerned” as he invented “cover stories” for time spent with her which unravelled when they found him at the pub with her.

On one occasion they “reluctantly” let Bardsley stay over on their sofa but “were concerned at their son’s eagerness to remain downstairs with her.”

The four month affair ended when the victim’s mum discovered the love letters while tidying out his bedroom in September.

Cops were alerted but the mum-of-two continued to hound the boy and begged him to “stick by her”.

Bardsley texted him demanding he “stick by the story”,  “get rid of the letters” and “delete all of our texts.”

She also encouraged him to change his social media name and profile photograph so that it would appear that her contact with him was with somebody else. 

The two even continued to meet in secret over the following days.

On September 11, Bardsley was arrested but denied having sex with the boy who also initially refused to give a statement. 

His school attendance dropped markedly, his behaviour rapidly deteriorated and he became angry and abusive towards his mother. 

She was bailed on condition she not contact him but she sent him messages over social media saying she “loved him” and expressed jealousy he was communicating with girls on Instagram.

She was arrested again after the boy was reported absent from school and a police officer saw the pair together.

Bardsley created “numerous” new social media accounts and used different phone numbers, and contacted both him and his new girlfriend. 

She was eventually locked up on February 15 and the phone was found in her cell the following day. She made no comment in police interview.

In a statement to the court Bardsley herself said: “I am disgusted and hate myself. It shouldn’t have happened. I destroyed their lives.”

Sentencing Bardsley, Judge Bernadette Baxter told her: “During the lockdown, the boy’s mother offered help and support towards you as you were at a low ebb, and your relationship was in difficult place.

“But you yourself are the mother to children, and you should know how fragile they are. 

“This boy was 15 and extremely vulnerable and was someone who you knew was easy to exploit and for your own selfish and manipulative ends, you decided to exploit this boy to provide yourself with some sexual satisfaction and emotional comfort.”

Bardsley was also made subject of a Sexual Harm Prevention Order and will have to sign the Sex Offender Register for life.

May 2021

Man held teenager hostage and raped her during 14-hour ordeal

A sadistic bully has been jailed for 14 years after he held a teenager hostage and raped her during a 14-hour ordeal.

Declan Delaney, 23, had asked the girl, named only as Miss A, 19, to drop some items off at his and flew into a rage when she told him she was going early to bed instead.

He then made a series of threats until she drove to his brother’s home. From there, he forced her to drive him to his flat, where he then told her: ‘This is my car now, you’re not getting it back. You’re staying with me.’

She was then imprisoned inside, where he raped her twice, banged her head into a chair, pulled her hair and threatened her with knives.

He also told her he was going to kill her, and forced her to listen to a call on loudspeaker, in which he asked a friend to meet him with a van, gloves and rope.

Bolton Crown Court heard he had told the friend: ‘We’ll take her to the usual spot in that abandoned unit, tie her up and leave her.’

When the friend seemingly arrived at the scene, Delaney, from Romiley, Stockport, told his victim: ‘You can save me a job of me killing you, why don’t you just kill yourself now. I’ll leave you in this room to die, no one will ever find you.

Miss A managed to escape the following day by promising Delaney she would not tell anyone about her ordeal. She also feigned calls to friends and family saying she was fine when they were worried about her whereabouts.

She arrived at her mother’s home in a ‘pitiable state, dishevelled, injured, hysterical, struggling to breath and in great distress’, the court was told.

In a statement to police, she said: ‘I genuinely believed he was going to kill me and I felt utterly degraded.

‘In the days and weeks following the attack I suffered soreness to my body plus mental and emotional exhaustion and being unable to comprehend what had happened, constantly reliving the experience.

‘I felt dirty and was washing myself constantly. I couldn’t leave my house for a number of days and couldn’t return to work and felt unable to do anything.

I also felt a sense of blame, self-doubt and uselessness. I have felt completely alone and ashamed. I was once a happy, stable, bubbly, outgoing person but I am shy, withdrawn and broken. He’s completely changed me as a person.

‘The physical injuries have healed, but the emotional and psychological scars run much deeper, and still have not begun to heal, and I feel that they won’t. And I will be this person forevermore.

‘I have no escape from what he did to me. Day and night, it haunts me. This is a real nightmare for me that has never ended. I worry that I will never be rid of it.’

Miss A had told Delaney she couldn’t drop off his belongings as she had to be up for work early the next day.

He responded by threatening to come to her home and smash her windows, telling her: ‘I swear on my sister’s grave, I’ll do it’.

She then drove to his brother’s home, intending to drive back the same night, but Delaney forced her to take him to his flat, telling her: ‘I don’t give a f**k. I swear if you don’t do it, watch what happens.’

En route he began to manhandle the handbrake and said he wished he was driving so he could crash the car into a wall. Once at his flat, he confiscated Miss A’s phone and keys and texted her mum to say she was ‘fine’ and staying over.

Alaric Bassano, prosecuting, said: ‘Over a period of what she judges to be about two and a half hours he pulled her hair by her plaits and dragged her about the room by her head.

‘He also grabbed her head, striking it against a chair, kicked her leg, dug his hand into her arm, repeatedly spat in her face, struck the side of her head causing her ear piercing to tear and her ear to bleed and threatened her with knives.

‘He made her log onto her own Facebook and Instagram accounts using his phone and then began to send messages to her male contacts pretending to be her and then claiming he had evidence of her infidelity.

These were deranged antics driven by anger, jealousy and paranoia. ‘At one point he threatened her in an extreme way, ringing someone, putting the call on loud speaker and chillingly declaring he had a “job” for him to do.’

Delaney was convicted of two charges of rape, false imprisonment, occasioning actual bodily harm, battery and threatening to damage property.

The court heard he also had previous convictions for beating up and controlling a girlfriend in 2018, as well as for a violent burglary and drug trafficking.

Sentencing, the judge Mr Recorder Peter Atherton told Delaney: ‘You led her to believe that you were actively making arrangements to kill her and burn and dump her body where it would not be found. You humiliated and terrified her.

You ignored her obvious fear and distress, and you cruelly denied her basic human needs. ‘It is clear from her personal statement that her dreadful experiences at your hands have had devastating ongoing consequences for her and for her family.

In different ways, each of these offences and your previous convictions demonstrate a propensity for coercive control and violence in your relationships with young women.’