STEVEN GRIFFITHS FROM ELLESMERE PORT SENTENCED FOR GROOMING AND SEXUAL ABUSE OF TEENAGE GIRL

In March 2012, a man from Ellesmere Port was sentenced after a court heard how he groomed a teenage girl for sexual abuse. Steven John Griffiths, aged 45 and residing on Warren Drive, took a girl 30 years his junior along country lanes in his work van, during which he told her he loved her.

Griffiths fondled her and persuaded her to engage in sexual acts, boasting about his sexual prowess. When he was scheduled for trial, he fled abroad but later surrendered to police. However, initially, an officer refused to arrest him, instead telling him to present himself at Chester police station.

During proceedings, Peter Moss, defending Griffiths, explained that "when he went to Ellesmere Port Police Station an officer refused to arrest him and told him to go to Chester and travel there under his own steam." Griffiths eventually pleaded guilty to charges of sexual grooming and sexual activity with a child.

At Mold Crown Court in Chester, he was sentenced to three and a half years in prison, with an additional month added for skipping bail. Moreover, Griffiths was placed on the Sex Offenders Register for life. An indefinite Sexual Offences Prevention Order (SOPO) was imposed, prohibiting him from contacting the victim again or being alone with a young girl in a house or vehicle.

Judge Nicolas Parry described the case, stating, "he had sexually abused a child 30 years his junior following days of grooming, sending her flattering text messages and Facebook messages. She eventually succumbed to your advances." The girl lied to her parents and arranged to meet Griffiths, who then repeatedly sexually abused her in his work van after taking her along back roads in North Wales.

Griffiths told her not to tell anyone and continued his advances through modern technology. Judge Parry emphasized that Griffiths’s guilty plea was significant because it spared the victim from having to relive her ordeal in court. Prosecutor Karl Scholtz added that the pair traveled to the Mold area to avoid detection, and that on a slip road of the A55 at Northop, in a country lane, and in a McDonald's car park, Griffiths committed sex acts with her.

Scholtz recounted that Griffiths said he loved her, wanted to be with her, and aimed to make her happy, but also warned her that if she told anyone, he would claim it was her fault. The judge condemned the crime, calling it "premeditated sexual abuse of a young child," and noted, "you clearly have issues to address."