July 2009

Schoolgirl mum rape yob jailed

A TEENAGER was jailed for four years yesterday for raping a schoolgirl who later had his child.

Jason Middleton, 19, attacked the youngster while he was supposedly babysitting her.

The victim, who cannot be named for legal reasons, has since had her baby girl adopted.

Middleton previously admitted raping the girl at a house in West Lothian in September 2005.

Judge Rita Rae QC yesterday described the case as tragic.

She said it was with ?regret? that prison had to be imposed at the High Court in Glasgow.

She told Middleton: You would appear to have fairly entrenched views on violence and about drug and alcohol abuse.

You have used this to excuse your actions and you also appear to blame the complainer for instigating sexual contact.

Middleton will be supervised for two years on his release and he was put on the sex offenders’ register.

The court heard earlier how Middleton, of Grangemouth, Stirlingshire, raped the girl while they were alone in the house.

DNA taken from him confirmed he was the father of the youngster’s child.

Prosecutor Jennifer Bain said: ?She has tried to commit suicide on a numbers of occasions.

Extra info :

Middleton was convicted of raping his 11 year old sister in 2005 at their family home. The rape resulted in the her becoming pregnant. The child was adopted. She attempted suicide following the assault on a number of occasions. He started sexually abusing her from the age of seven.

Revealed: The tragic truth about Britain’s youngest mother, a rape and who the father of her child really is

 

Whatever your views on abortion, there are many reasons why you could understand a girl like Tressa Middleton wanting to terminate a pregnancy. 

Sadly, her age  –  she was just 11 when she became pregnant  –  is only one reason, and perhaps not the most compelling at that. 

Yet, nearly five years on, she insists an abortion never crossed her mind. Why? ‘I wanted the baby, no matter how it was made,’ she explains. ‘I knew I would love it, whatever. And it would love me. 

‘Babies always love their mothers, don’t they? It’s one of them things about life.’ The poignancy of that statement can only be fully appreciated when you know the real story behind Tressa’s baby girl, and the family she had the misfortune to be born into. 

You may think you do. A media frenzy has surrounded Tressa since it emerged, in 2006, that she was to become the youngest mother in Britain.

Back then, Tressa couldn’t actually be named because of her tender years, but she was nonetheless interviewed about how she was shopping for a pram, and how she was going to kick the ‘booze and fags’ and be a good mum. Readers duly shuddered. 

Earlier this week, Tressa was back in news because, having turned 16, she could be identified for the first time. 

This time the story, illustrated by a heart-stopping snapshot of her on the day she gave birth, seemed to have come to a pretty predictable conclusion. The drink and drugs hadn’t stopped. 

The baby, a girl, had been adopted. Tressa had no access, save for a twice-yearly letter. She railed at the unfairness of this, but, in truth, few could sympathise. 

The inevitable conclusions were drawn: Tressa was a feckless youngster, whose whole existence had been characterised by too much bad living and too little discipline.

By continuing on her destructive path even after her child was born, she had blown her one chance at redeeming herself, and sealed her own fate. 

Harsh? Yes, but mostly true. Tressa would say so herself, and does today. Yet it is not the whole story. 

The point that has been missed in all of this  –  and one that turns the story into an even more troubling one  –  is that Tressa did not get pregnant after a drunken fumble, as was reported earlier this week. 

Her baby was the product of a rape and the child’s father  –  the perpetrator of the attack  –  was her own brother. 

Last year, Jason Middleton, then 19, was jailed for four years for the attack. He was 16 when it happened, at the family home in West Lothian, five years older than his sister.