内容摘要："You cannot understand what's happened. You can't bring any sort of closure to it," he says.

"You cannot understand what's happened. You can't bring any sort of closure to it," he says.

David Thorne, 22, of New Crescent, Cherry Willingham, near Lincoln, pleaded guilty during a hearing at Lincoln Crown Court.He also admitted three offences of assault by penetration on the same victim.

The court heard Thorne had entered the pleas on the basis that he believed the victim, who cannot be named, was over the age of consent.Jeremy Janes, in mitigation, told the court Thorne accepted meeting the girl in his car on three occasions after contact between them on social media platform Snapchat.All the offences happened in December 2023.

"She told him through the chats she was 17 – she said she was at college," Mr Janes said.In response, David Eager, prosecuting, said the Crown Prosecution Service would require 14 days to decide if the basis of Thorne's pleas were acceptable.

Judge Simon Hirst told the defendant: "You have pleaded guilty to very serious matters.

"I will adjourn your case until 17 February for the prosecution to consider if they accept your basis of plea, which is that you had a genuine and reasonable belief that she was old enough to consent.", Shropshire, gave evidence to the Commons Home Affairs Committee at the start of April and told MPs he had asked a government official "do you still want me?", amid uncertainty over his role.

This week, the issue was again raised in the Commons, with Conservative frontbencher Katie Lam was among MPs demanding updates on the local inquiries."Over three months since the Government announced these local inquiries, Tom Crowther KC, a barrister invited by the Home Office to help establish them, knows almost nothing about their progress, and neither do we," she told the Commons.

Responding, Safeguarding Minister Jess Phillips said councils will be able to access a £5m fund to support locally-led work on grooming gangs."Following feedback from local authorities, the fund will adopt a flexible approach to support both full independent local inquiries and more bespoke work, including local victims' panels or locally-led audits into the handling of historic cases," she said.