Man Uses Facebook To Trick Underage Teenage Girls Into Sleeping With Him

A man who used Facebook to prey on underage girls for sex has been jailed for six years. Jamie Ramage, 20, tricked two teens into having unprotected sex with him after sending them messages on the social networking site. He was working on meeting a third girl in a hotel when her mother found his lewd messages and contacted police – butnot before the girl had sent him naked photographs of herself. Ramage, of Whinside, Stanley, County Durham, had already been found guilty by a jury of one offence of having unlawful sex with a child and was onbail when he committed the other offences. At Durham Crown Court Dan Cordey, prosecuting, said Ramage used Facebook to contact impressionable young girls. He persuaded his first victim, from the Newcastle area, to visit him at Stanleyand they had sex at a friend’s house. The second girl also visited him in Stanley and they had sex in a local park. Judge Penny Moreland saidRamage ‘manipulated, bullied and emotionally blackmailed’ the underage girls into having sex with him and told them their age ‘was just a number’. Mr Cordey said Ramage told the third girl, from South Yorkshire, he had received a commission from a record company to write music and the cash would pay for a hotel for the pair of them. He said the pair exchangedhundreds of messages, including lewd photographs, in the 10 days before the girl’s mother came across some of the messages, questioned her daughter and contacted police. Judge Moreland told him an ‘aggravating factor’ in his offending was that he had unprotected sex with his first two victims. Julie Clemitson, representing Ramage, said her client was immature and targeted young girls because ‘only girls of that age would fall for the rubbish which comes from his mouth’. The judge told Ramage shebelieved he posed a ‘serious risk’ to young girls and said: ‘You displayed predatory behaviour to identify girls to fall prey to you.’ Judge Moreland jailed him on November 9 for four years for each of the two counts of having sex with an under-age girl, the sentences to run concurrently, but added two years on to those for the offence of grooming the third. She ordered he be placed under supervision for a further six years, meaning he will be supervised until he is 32 years old. Ramage was also placed on the sex offenders register for life.