A student who repeatedly raped a 12-year-old girl he met on Tinder avoided jail after a judge said he was 'immature' and thought she was over 16, while his victim behaved in a 'sexually suggestive' way.
Jachin Joshua Mascall, 20, met the girl on the dating app last year and travelled to London from Dunstable, Bedfordshire, to meet her.
They spent two days travelling around the capital together and had sex in various locations including the car park at Westfields Stratford Shopping Centre last May.
Following his arrest, Mascall admitted having sex with the girl, who was two months short of her 13th birthday, but insisting he genuinely thought she was over 16.
He admitted three counts of rape of a child under 13 at Inner London Crown Court and spent seven months in custody until he was released on bail last month.
Jachin Joshua Mascall, 20, met the girl on the dating app last year and travelled to London from Dunstable, Bedfordshire, to meet her
Judge Freya Newbery said there was 'no suggestion' Mascall had 'any paedophile tendencies at all' - adding that he thought she was an adult because 'she had a car and a place to live'.
'What there is instead is a young man who is relatively ordinary, immature and possibly naïve,' she said.
Freya Newbury sits at Inner London Crown Court as a Recorder - meaning she serves part time while still working as a barrister.
According to a biography on the Middle Temple website, she attended a comprehensive school before taking the Cambridge Entrance Exam aged 16 and going on to read Law at 18.
Freya Newbury
After building up a legal practice, she became a Recorder in 2004 and holds a variety of other roles including that of vice-chairman of the Bar Council Equality and Diversity Committee and the head of ethics training at Middle Temple Advocacy.
She also works with Lambeth Youth Offending Service. She leads ethics training for Middle Temple Advocacy.
Several other cases she has been involved in have been reported in the press. In 2020, she decided not to jail a conman who had tricked rail companies out of £130,000 after hearing he was the sole carer for his 11-year-old son.
Judge Newbury said that with fewer family visits allowed due to lockdown, she had to 'pass the shortest sentence I can' against Olajide Abass, 45, to avoid harming the child's welfare.
And last year, she sentenced a transgender beautician to nine months in prison after she barged a grandmother to the ground. The incident happened a day after she was released from prison for shoving a police officer onto Tube tracks.
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'You said in your interview that you thought she was an adult because she was on Tinder saying she was an adult.
'And you've explained that because she had a car and a place to
