August 2012 Childkiller gets life term cut by judge A NOTORIOUS child rapist and murderer can ask to be freed after a judge ruled his crime was NOT sexually motivated. Paul Somers is serving life for the abduction, rape and murder of a 10-year-old schoolgirl  Somers savagely abused the ten-year-old girl in woods in West Yorkshire in 1990. Somers had previously been charged with four rapes in a 13-year period. He’d been cleared of three and served four years for the other.  He crushed her skull with a stone and strangled her with a dog lead — before burying her body in a shallow grave. Somers, 55, was jailed for life in Leeds in 1991. But yesterday Mr Justice Hickinbottom ruled the crime was not serious enough to justify a “whole life” sentence. The High Court judge added strangling Sarah with a dog chain must have “worsened her agony” but said the motive for Somers’ crime was to conceal the rape. He added: “Although there was a sexual element to the murder, the murder did not have a sexual motivation.” He fixed the minimum term at 22 years. Somers will also get credit for 295 days he served on remand, so he can now be considered for parole.