A STOURBRIDGE man has been jailed for four-and-a-half years for raping and indecently assaulting a schoolgirl 18 years ago.

Simon Davies, aged 38, of Birchfield Road, Wollescote, was sentenced at Birmingham Crown Court today (Friday) after being found guilty of the offences at an earlier hearing.

The court was told Davies was 21 when he and a 15-year-old girl went together to an area known as the Dingle in Pedmore to have sex and that contact between the pair had started out consensually.

But her subsequent change of heart and repeated requests to stop were ignored, Recorder Nicholas Cartwright said.

He told the court: “She didn’t like it; she made that plain. She asked you to stop and you didn't.”

The Recorder said as well as raping the schoolgirl, Davies had also indecently assaulted her and he added: “You have shown no remorse. You don’t even acknowledge you did anything wrong at the time.

“You did your best to cast her as the one who was in the wrong. To this day you maintain that she made up what went on at the Dingle but you were disbelieved by the jury.”

He said since the offences were committed in 1997 Davies had “led a blameless life” and he may well have never been prosecuted if it hadn’t been for his “reckless behaviour” in making contact with his victim’s sister to ask her out.

The Recorder acknowledged Davies may have been “immature” at the time but he said the incident had resulted in the schoolgirl missing out on her teenage years and later being over protective with her own children.

He described her as “particularly vulnerable”, adding: “She was just 15 at the time and you were five years older.”

Defence solicitor Chris Rodwell said Mr Davies denied the offences and he described what happened at the Dingle as “a consensual venture”.

Mr Rodwell said the teenaged girl had been “just shy of her 16th birthday at the time” and added: “One week later and it would have been a totally different scenario.”

He said Davies was not “predatory in any way” and despite the age gap the pair had been among groups of young people who all congregated in the Wollescote area.

Ahead of sentencing, he asked for Davies to be given “light at the end of the tunnel” but the Recorder jailed him for a total of four-and-a-half years.