‘My abuser only served 11 months in jail after using Covid backlog to argue for a lesser sentence’
When Alice Cross met her abuser at the age of 16, her life changed overnight.
The teenager from Norwich was groomed online by 34-year-old Trevor Webb, who had made her feel special after approaching her online in January 2018 – but within weeks allegedly controlled what she ate and the clothes she wore.
Over the months that followed, Webb trafficked Alice through a website for sex workers and forced her to perform sex acts in hotels for other men for his own financial gain.
Webb also allegedly asked her to carry out his “kidnap” fantasies, instructing Alice to act afraid as he drove her to remote fields to fantasise about how he would hide her body.
His hold over her would eventually come to an end in September 2018, when the abuse was reported to the police and Webb was arrested.
Webb pleaded guilty to two counts of arranging to facilitate the sexual exploitation of a child and making an indecent image of a child at Norwich Crown Court in August 2021.
Further charges for rape, grievous bodily harm and extreme pornography were later dropped, with Alice told by prosecutors they “wouldn’t be able to prove it was non-consensual”.
After a three-year wait to see her abuser face justice, Webb was handed a prison sentence of 22 months after his lawyer argued the Covid-19 court backlog had impacted his mental health.
As it took over three years for the case to come to court due to the lengthy investigation and reports required, Webb’s lawyer argued that he had been signed off for work as a result of the stress of not knowing his fate.
“I was sitting on my sofa with my mum listening to the sentencing through an audio link and I genuinely just burst into tears,” Alice told The Independent about the day he was jailed in December 2021.
“I was crying and sobbing for a really long time. It was not something anyone had prepared me for, we were prepared for it to be years. It was very shocking to say the least.”
Within 11 months, Webb was released from prison, Norfolk Police confirmed. As he served less than a year behind bars, he was not eligible for any rehabilitation requirement programmes and has been re-released into the community with little intervention.
Yet the trauma he subjected Alice to has been life-changing. Now aged 23, Alice has been diagnosed with complex post-traumatic stress disorder and a neurological condition and says she has struggled to maintain a job.
Alice, who received help from the charity Imara and now works there to help other victims of sexual abuse, said she was appalled when his lawyer successfully argued that Webb “suffered” as a result of not knowing his fate due to pandemic backlogs.
“I think there should be a mandatory minimum sentence for crimes like that and obviously Covid is gone now but it should never have been a mitigating factor,” Alice said. “Covid has nothing to do with the victim and nothing to do with the offender’s crimes.
“There is no excuse on this earth that would explain why he only got 11 months in prison after what he did to me, which altered my entire life and left me with lifelong injuries both mentally and physically.”
For cases of this nature and especially those involving victims of Alice’s age, defendants can be imprisoned for up to seven years according to sentencing guidelines.
During the pandemic in June 2020, guidance from the chairman of the Sentencing Council, Lord Justice Holroyde, said that courts must “bear in mind the practical realities of the effects of the current health emergency”.
He added that courts should consider mitigating factors and consider that the impact of immediate imprisonment would be “particularly heavy” for certain groups of offenders.
