A YOUNG man who sexually abused a sleeping girl aged eight or nine in York has received a suspended prison sentence.

Stephen Brewis was 12 at the time, York Crown Court heard. 

Peter Hampton, prosecuting, said when he was 14 or 15, Brewis coerced a second girl into having sex regularly with him.

The second girl thought at one stage she was pregnant, though she was not, the court was told. 

The Recorder of York, Judge Stephen Ashurst, said sentencing Brewis was complicated because he was 20 when he appeared in the dock and therefore a young adult, though he committed the offences when he was a juvenile.

He gave him a nine-month prison sentence suspended for two years and put him on the sex offenders' register for ten years "so that the public can be reassured that if there is any suggestion of you relapsing into your behaviour as a younger man the police will be able to have you on their radar", the judge said.

Brewis, of Inglenby Way, Blythe, Northumberland, admitted sexually assaulting the younger girl once and four charges of sexually assaulting the older.

Mr Hampton said Brewis had asked for the girl to stay overnight at the same York house as him. She awoke to find Brewis sexually abusing her.

He stopped when she started to move and left the room.

"She thought he believed she was asleep throughout the assault," he said.
Brewis denied co-ercing the second girl in a police interview.

For Brewis, Richard Bloomfield said the police only knew about the second girl because he "effectively confessed" about his sexual relationship with her when detectives interviewed him about his activity with the younger girl. Adults were aware the two teenagers were having sex, he said.  The offence against the younger girl was out of sexual "curiosity".

The judge said events in his past may have influenced Brewis' thinking, but he had known that his offence against the younger girl was wrong.