December 2007 Mum’s anger over pervert’s sentence THE mum of a girl who was the victim of a paedophile is furious that he has escaped jail. Steven Michael Tipper from Worcestershire admitted gross indecency with a child at Bournemouth Crown Court but escaped with what the girl’s mother called “a slap on the wrist”. The mum said: “This man took away my daughter’s innocence and he seems to have been let off.” The court heard how police found indecent pictures on Tipper’s computer which showed him exposing himself and committing an indecent act in front of the young girl, who is from the Purbeck area. Judge Samuel Wiggs was told in court that Tipper, 48, had given the primary school age girl chocolate and sweets and had said to keep it “their little secret”. The images came to light during an investigation into his downloading of indecent images of children, for which Tipper had already spent time in prison. Judge Wiggs said that Tipper had completed a sex offender treatment programme while in prison for the other offences, so he sentenced him to a three-year community rehabilitation order. He had also already been banned from working with children and put on the sex offenders’ register. The girl’s mum said she was unable to enter the court room to hear the sentence because she could not bear to be near Tipper and when she heard Tipper was not going back to prison she was very upset. “Some people go to prison for stealing from a shop but he is let off with just a slap on the wrist for this. “My husband and I feel let down by the justice system.”