The Voice of Spalding and South Holland
A residential support worker who began a relationship with a 15-year-old girl in a Lincolnshire children’s home was today (Friday) jailed for five years and four months.
Andrew Geeson, 27, of St Margarets, Quadring, progressed to a full sexual relationship with the vulnerable teenager after she turned 16.
Lincoln Crown Court heard Geeson continued with the relationship despite warnings from the home where he worked and being served with a child abduction notice.
The court was told Geeson used his position of trust to begin grooming the girl after she was placed at the home in south Lincolnshire.
Jonathon Dee, prosecuting, said the relationship began with kissing and digital penetration when the girl was just 15.
“He was clearly alert to the fact she was under 16,” Mr Dee told the court:
“As soon as she was over 16 the relationship went from one where sexual intercourse didn’t take place, to one where it did.”
Mr Dee said sexual intercourse occured shortly after the girl turned 16 when Geeson took the girl for a day out and bought her a Pandora brace.
“Sexual intercourse took place on at least five more occasions until he was suspended and then dismissed in June 2020,” Mr Dee added.
Even after his dismissal for inappropriate conduct Geeson kept seeing the victim and was pictured with her sitting on his lap, the court was told.
Geeson denied any sexual interaction when he was questioned by police but later pleaded guilty to two charges of sexual activity with a child while in a position of trust, and two charges of sexual activity with a child.
In a moving impact statement which she bravely read out in court, Geeson’s victim, who can not be named, described how her life had been changed.
“I was a vulnerable 14-year-old placed in a children’s home,” she explained.
“At that point in my life what I needed was to be cared for and to be safe.”
She added: “Instead he took away years of my life.”
John McNally, mitigating, argued Geeson had genuine feelings in the relationship despite having his own partner and children.
“This was a young man, the age disparity notable, but not of the order one sometimes sees in these cases, who at work fell for a person in his care.”
Passing sentence Recorder Simon King told Geeson: “It is difficult to imagine a more obvious, egregious and serious abuse of trust than to engage in a romantic and sexual relationship with a child who is placed in your care.”
The Recorder added it was an aggravating feature that Geeson had attempted to manipulate his victim by threatening suicide, attempted to destroy evidence on his phone and social media and ignored warnings about his conduct.
Geeson was also ordered to register as a Sex Offender and banned from working with children for life.
