A 31-year-old man has been sentenced to four years and eight months’ imprisonment at Derby Crown Court after luring a vulnerable 17-year-old girl in care to Derby under the guise of a relationship and coercing her into prostitution.
Leighton Murray, formerly of HMP Nottingham, appeared for sentence following a police investigation into modern slavery, trafficking, and commercial sexual exploitation.
The prosecution outlined that Murray targeted the 17-year-old victim, who was living in care, and orchestrated her relocation from Leicester to Derby by pretending they were in a romantic relationship. Once she arrived in Derby, Murray isolated her in a hotel room and created an advertising profile for her on an adult website.
Prosecutor Christopher Geeson detailed how the teenager was forced to engage in sexual acts with a series of strangers, stating:
“There was violence, threats of violence, psychological abuse and degrading sexual activity of a victim that was passed around to different customers. She was set up on an internet site by Murray that was called ‘Adult work,’ given an online identity and the most aggravating feature was that she was subject to a number of different types of sex. Various different people would go to visit her and Murray arranged for her to be paid £50 more each time she had sex without a condom. She was clearly someone that had been used and exploited by Mr Murray under threat and he assaulted her on at least one occasion.”
The court was told that as a consequence of the unprotected intercourse Murray coerced her to undertake for increased payments, the teenager contracted a sexually transmitted disease. Enquiries also revealed that Murray had been controlling two adult women involved in prostitution for financial gain between April 2014 and December 2015.
Murray entered guilty pleas to:
One count of controlling a child subject to sexual exploitation (committed between 12 and 15 December 2015)
Two counts of controlling prostitution for gain (committed between 14 April 2014 and 22 December 2015)
Passing sentence, Judge Nirmal Shant QC condemned the predatory exploitation of a vulnerable victim:
“She was only 17 years of age and already involved in prostitution and you chose to exploit that knowing her vulnerability. You organised her activity on a number of occasions taking significant amounts of money from her. But it goes further than that. You encouraged her to have sexual intercourse without protection and manipulated her for your own gains because of her age.”
Judge Shant sentenced Murray to an immediate custodial term of four years and eight months’ imprisonment. Murray was further made subject to public protection orders and registration requirements on the Sex Offenders Register.
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