A rapist paid for a taxi to bring a teenage girl more than 60 miles across the country before raping her.
The man, Jake O’Neil, aged 33, met the girl, who was under 16, in an online chat room where he groomed her before moving the conversation onto Snapchat.
The girl told O’Neil that she was underage but he continued to send explicit messages to her until she blocked him. However, he continued to message her using a different profile.
In December 2021 he paid for a taxi to bring her 65 miles from Wolverhampton in the West Midlands, UK to his home in Wilmslow where he raped her.
Her family then contacted the police when she didn’t come to school. O’Neil tried to conceal his crimes by smashing her phone and throwing it into a river, but police men traced her location to Cheshire.
He left the girl alone while he went shopping but when he returned found police officers were at the house to arrest him. After his arrest, O’Neill admitted having sex with the girl on two other dates that month, claiming he believed she was 16 at the time.
However, he was charged with eight charges, including rape, attempted rape, child abduction, grooming, and four counts of penetration. Following a trial, he was found guilty by a jury at Chester Crown Court on Friday, January 5.
On Tuesday (March 5) he was sentenced to 15 years in prison with a five-year extension by a judge. Following the sentencing, Detective Constable Charlotte Astbury from Cheshire Police, who led the investigation, said: “O’Neil clearly knew she underage – we even found a message he sent to someone admitting she was underage.
“Knowing this, O’Neil took advantage of a vulnerable teenager, going to great lengths to groom her for his own warped intentions and is now paying the price for this with a prison sentence.”
