A judge called for a review of security on dating websites as he jailed for life a serial rapist who targeted divorced and widowed women on Match.com.
Jason Lawrance, 50, will serve at least twelve and a half years in prison after being convicted of seven sex attacks on women he met through the website. Sentencing the former company director, who approached thousands of women online, Judge Gregory Dickinson, QC, told Lawrance that he was “devious, manipulative and highly dangerous to women.
“In my judgment these offences taken together — so many victims, the trail of terror and agony for which you are responsible — mean that the imposition of a sentence of imprisonment for life is fully justified.”
Judge Dickinson called for a centralised helpline for women to report date-rape attacks, saying that consideration should be given to a system of automatic referral to the police if any complaint is made.
He said that in the Lawrance case no person or organisation had been in a position to “join the dots” or have an overview of complaints made to the website.
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Described in court as a “sexual predator who will not take no for an answer”, Lawrance, of Liphook in Hampshire, committed three of his attacks within months of marrying a woman he met through Match.com.
He joined the site in 2009 after splitting from his partner of 23 years and raped his first victim in June 2011.
Encouraging his victims to contact him by email or phone, away from the gaze of the site’s administrators, Lawrance attacked his victims in hotel rooms, at their homes and in the back of a van.
He was found guilty of raping five women and trying to rape and sexually assaulting another two. Four of the victims complained to Match.com. One told Derby crown court that the site “didn’t seem to give a damn” when she asked them to put up a warning about Lawrance.
Match did not remove Lawrance’s profile because he had not breached their terms and conditions.
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After stressing that twelve and a half years was the minimum time that the father of three would spend in jail Judge Dickinson told Lawrance: “I am compelled to the dreadful conclusion that you enjoyed raping women.
“After these terrible crimes you acted as if nothing had happened. You have shown no remorse — zero appreciation of the seriousness of these offences — for the pain you have inflicted on these ladies, their families and their friends.
“Your aim was to get [the victims] into a compromising situation and then to do whatever you liked to them — anticipating that they would be too frightened or embarrassed to make a complaint, or that they would not be believed if they did come forward.”
Explaining his decision to impose a life term the judge said that Lawrance posed a significant risk to the public. “That phrase is taken from an act of parliament. In plain English: you are a danger to women,” he said.
Match.com said that it welcomed the sentence and was “appalled” by the crimes. The website said “there is a tiny minority of people who set out to harm others” and that its members’ safety was the company’s “highest priority”.
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Analysis
Dating websites are a popular way to find love (Rosemary Bennett writes). One in five relationships start there and the industry is worth more than £2 billion globally. In the UK nine million people have signed up to sites and the Office for National Statistics uses their fees to help measure inflation.
The Match.com rapist will make many think twice before logging on. The judge felt so strongly that users needed more protection he called for a review. He was concerned that four victims complained to the site before three others were attacked. There has been an almost sixfold increase in reports of rapes related to online dating over five years according to the National Crime Agency, with 184 reports in 2014. About 85 per cent of victims were women.
Many companies have policies to tackle online abuse. They should also consider behaviour offline. Any whiff of an offence during a date should lead to the alleged perpetrator’s account being suspended.
Internet dating can lead to a false sense of security, with lengthy online chats meaning that users believe that they know their dates before they meet. The NCA says that almost half of victims of rape related to a dating website spent time alone, in private, with their attacker on their first date. This is something they would be unlikely to do if they had just met in a pub.