Jailed: 'Dangerous and disturbing' Telford paedophile pressured schoolgirl into sex

Shrewsbury Crown Court was told how these offences were committed in 2014 and 2015, but Taylor has since gone on to receive multiple convictions for child sex offences, including possession of indecent images and inciting a child to engage in sexual activity on Facebook.

Notes which Taylor had written were also discovered, depicting his warped fantasies about certain children and how he wanted to sexually abuse them. And the court was told how Taylor was once expelled from Telford College for punching a lecturer after taking a weapon onto the campus.

For those reasons, Judge Anthony Lowe decided Taylor was a "dangerous" offender who posed a significant risk to the public, and increased his sentence.

The court was told how Taylor first met the girl when she was 14, about to turn 15, and he was 18 in Telford town centre. They began messaging and Taylor asked her out two weeks later. When they were in front of his friends, he got her to tell them she was his cousin.

They began a relationship and Taylor first had sex with the girl in a field near a lake in Telford. She was 15 at the time and he had picked her up from school.

"He started to kiss her and she said she felt uncomfortable," said Nigel Stelling, prosecuting. "He said, 'It's fine, no-one can see us'.

"She kept asking him to stop, hoping someone else would appear and that might stop him.. She recalls going really quiet, and just waiting for it to be over."

The relationship went on for about six months, during which time he would emotionally blackmail her, threatening to harm himself if she did not agree to have sex with him.

"She felt she had to say yes," Mr Stelling added.

Taylor would take her to his mother's house, where she had to lie and say she was 17. He showed her a BB gun that he owned, and he had a razor blade in his bedroom.

When Taylor tried to get intimate with the victim, she would make up excuses to try and make him stop, but he would "pressure" her and say he "really wanted to because of his addiction".

One time, Taylor tried to get her to engage in bondage. She told him she did not want to do it. He blindfolded her with a tie.

"She described feeling powerless," Mr Stelling said. "He said he needed sex to release him from his depression."

The relationship ended when she was able to use Taylor seeing other girls as an excuse to cut ties with him.

She reported Taylor to the police after he tried to contact her on Instagram in 2020.

When interviewed by officers, he made no comment to questions, supplying a statement which claimed he had been friends with the victim and never had sex with her.

The victim said in an impact statement made in November 2021 that the last two years of reliving her ordeal through the judicial process had been "a nightmare". She said her post-traumatic stress had caused her to have "borderline personality disorder".

She also said it had affected her work and her relationship with her partner.

"I have nightmares about him," she said. "I feel guilty that I didn't report it sooner."

Taylor pleaded guilty to seven counts of engaging in sexual activity with a child.

Kevin Jones, mitigating, accepted that Taylor has "a level of immaturity," and asked the judge to consider that although he has been convicted of other offences since, that these were actually Taylor's first crimes.

Taylor, who listened in to the hearing via video link from HMP Hewell, wore rectangular spectacles and a red checked shirt. His face remained emotionless as he switched between slouching in his chair and leaning forward with his arms on the table as Judge Lowe handed down his sentence.

Judge Lowe said that although four years might not seem a big age gap for people in their 20s or 30s, there is a big difference when people are in their teens in terms of mental and physical development.

"There were clear overtones of controlling and coercive behaviour demonstrated to initiate Alistair Taylor to have sexual activity with her when she was not particularly willing to do so," he said.

In terms of Taylor blackmailing the girl into sex with self-harm threats, the judge said: "That is quite the emotional burden to put on someone who had only just turned 15."

"I have to consider dangerousness," he said, pointing to what he described as Taylor's "glut" of other sexual offences on his "disturbing" record. He also referred to the violent incident at the college and the fantasy notes.

"I am satisfied there is a significant risk of you causing serious harm," he said, bumping up his sentence from one of four-and-a-half years to one of eight years.

Taylor will be able to apply for parole after three years. When he is released, he will be on licence until the eight years is up.

He will be on the sex offenders register for life.