A paedophile who hid in a 12 year-old girl’s bedroom and had sex with her for two days while her unknowing parents sat downstairs has been jailed.
Leigh Arendse, 25, groomed the innocent youngster on an internet chat room before going from London to her Cambridgeshire home to meet her.
He then spent 48 hours in her bedroom watching DVDs and having sex with her – and hid behind the door when her mum went to check on her.
Arendse claimed he thought the girl was actually 14 and only realised her true age when her mum told her off for smoking in her room.
The fiend then left the house and went to London with the girl whose parents raised the alarm when she went missing last August.
Arendse, of Brunswick Park, London, has now been jailed for four years after admitting two counts of raping the girl.
Judge Jonathan Haworth told him: “This is not a case of an 18 or 19-year-old – you are a mature adult.
“You had been in her bedroom when you knew that members of her family were also in the house.
“There was a sheer irresponsibility on your part when you failed to find out her real age.”
Sara Walker, prosecuting, told Cambridge Crown Court: “The defendant stayed in the victim’s room where the two watched DVDs.
“The next evening, her mum came up and he hid behind the door.
“Her mum was appalled at the mess and said that her daughter shouldn’t be smoking at the age of 12. The defendant then found out that she was indeed 12.”
She added: “The victim said she started to kiss him and that he initially pushed her off.
“She then tried to kiss him again and he kissed her back before they had sex.”
The court heard that the youngster told her family she had unprotected sex with Arendse .
Defending, David McIntosh claimed that Arendse’s response to finding out the girl’s true age was one of “shock” and he decided to return to London.
He said: “She was the one who insisted on following him to London and in his defence he didn’t want her to come with him.”
Arendse was also handed a 10-year Sexual Offences Prevention Order.
The court heard how Arendse arranged to see the girl after meeting her in an online chat room.
Cambridgeshire Constabulary yesterday said Arendse told her he was 20 and she had claimed to be 14 in their conversations, which moved to daily texting and phone calls.
The pair met on August 28, last year, at Ely railway station, before going back to her home where Arendse snuck into her bedroom.
Arendse then stayed hidden in the room until August 30.
The victim tried to travel to London with Arendse, but he spoke to a ticket officer at King’s Cross station in London and her mother was called.
She told her mother that she and Arendse had sex.
Det Con Andy MacDonald, from Cambridshire Constabulary, yesterday said: “Arendse was clearly aware that the girl in this case was underage but continued his contact with her and arranged to meet up.
“He had plenty of opportunities to stop the relationship but choose to travel to Ely to meet her to have sex.
“This case shows the dangers of using online chat rooms and how easily perpetrators can gain the confidence of young people in order to exploit them.”
Arendse was jailed for four years and placed on the sex offenders’ register.
He was also given a sexual offences prevention order which bans him from having unsupervised contact with children under 16, possessing any device capable of accessing the internet unless it retains and displays history and deleting such history.
