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A teenage babysitter who raped a girl of five after watching online porn was spared jail by a judge who blamed the sickening crime on today’s society.

Gareth Hawkesworth, who has been criticised in the past for going soft on perverts, refused to lock up the 14-year-old insisting his mind was corrupted by the vile images he had witnessed.

And experts claimed the case was proof of the dangers children faced from ­easy access to porn sites on the internet. Campaigners want them blocked.

Judge Hawkesworth told the boy, who appeared in the dock wearing his school uniform, he was satisfied he acted on impulse when he subjected the girl to a depraved sex act.

He said: “I believe you have become sexualised by your exposure to and the corruption of pornography.

“Your exposure at such a young age has ended in tragedy. It was the fault of the world and society.”

But he slapped a sexual offences prevention order on the youngster for five years banning him from viewing porn or having any mobile devices or computers without filters blocking sites.

He also got a three-year community order. And he told him that had he been four years older he would have been sent to jail for six and a half years.

The boy attacked the girl, neither of whom can be named, at her home where he was being paid £10 to look after her, Cambridge crown court heard.

He held an apron over her face and told him he was going to feed her chocolate. Instead he carried out the sex act. But the girl told her dad of the attack.

When interviewed by police the boy claimed his “hormones took over”.

Julia Flagan, defending, said: “This was an isolated incident. There was no threat or force used.

"He was watching excessive pornography, which was inappropriate.

“We have a frightened and remorseful boy who is ashamed of what he has done.”

The boy admitted the attack. His victim’s dad fears it has caused her long-term ­psychological damage.

A government report recently found a wave of sex attacks being carried out by youngsters warped by online porn.

Last month, a boy of 12 who raped a nine-year-old girl after watching adult films was also spared jail as his lawyer warned of a generation of kids growing up with a “skewed view” on sex.

Tory MP Claire Perry, who is campaigning against open access to porn, said: “This harrowing case emphasises pornography can have serious negative impacts on children.”

The NSPCC’s Jon Brown added: “This underlines why we want a system where adults have to opt-in to get access to internet porn.”

In February last year, Judge Hawkesworth gave Turon Ali, 26, a suspended sentence after he groomed a girl of 14 for sex, telling him he was “not a paedophile as such”.

And he freed a pervert student as jail would “interfere with his studies”.

Talk to your children: Dr Zoe Hilton, Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre

LACK of filtering and greater access to the internet via mobile phones and other technology means that adult pornography is much more available.

Webcam chat sites are of particular concern. Children can view adults acting inappropriately and can be encouraged to take risks that they would not ordinarily consider.

The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre works closely with the UK Council for Child Internet Safety and all of the major internet service providers to try and make their products as safe as possible.

As part of the CEOP’s education programme Thinkuknow, children are also encouraged to make the right choices online and to know where to go to report.

Parents also have an important role in talking to their children about the appropriateness of viewing this type of content and should put controls in place, such as filtering and /or monitoring software on their devices.

Visit www.thinkuknow.co.uk/parents

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It's a sex timebomb: Corinne Sweet, psychologist

Over the last 20 years we have seen increasing sexualisation of young people.

But often children are too young to make any sense of the videos or images they see.

You cannot simply say that children act out pornography in a copycat manner.

But what they glean from sexual videos does affect how they behave.

Research suggests that exposure to extreme pornography desensitises children.

They can be so immersed in pornography it becomes their norm.

Explicit videos arouse feelings in children they cannot process, and those feelings have to be let out ­somewhere.

If they see things online, they may act them out.

We are building ourselves a sexual timebomb by making pornography so easy to access.

Most pornography shows fantasy relationships – inequality and domination.

This is not a healthy message to send to our kids.

Corinne blogs on www.corinnesweet.com