Rapist jailed for 13½ years after grooming child

(CNS): A 34-year-old man who groomed and raped a child when she was just eleven and twelve years old was jailed for 13 years and six months, having been convicted in September last year. Travis Arlington Ebanks was sentenced in April, but the ruling was only recently released by the court. Ebanks was found guilty of grooming the young girl from when she was just nine years old, using a Snapchat account and deceiving the child by pretending to be only 14 years old.

According to the details of the case, the child had blocked Ebanks on a number of occasions, but he would then create new accounts under different names to pursue her. The court found that Ebanks had planned the offence when he first raped the girl in the back of a car he had borrowed from his boss. He lured her to meet him by threatening to tell her family and friends about the bad things she had been doing if she did not meet with him.

Although she cried and asked him to stop, Ebanks continued to rape the young girl. He also succeeded in luring her to meet him for a second time a few weeks later, around the time of her twelfth birthday, when he raped her again at another location in the back of the borrowed vehicle.

The court heard in a victim impact statement how the young victim had blamed herself, thinking she had done something wrong. She had thought he was a friend and had trusted him. However, she said she had come to realise that it was not her fault “but his fault”.

In mitigation, his attorney had argued that Ebanks had shown remorse for what had happened to the victim and was sorry for what she had endured. The offending occurred after he began having problems in his long-term relationship with the mother of his daughter, whom he had not seen for many years. He became depressed and demotivated and began to have feelings of hopelessness. He left the family home and became a loner.

Since he was remanded, he has been estranged from his family, but he has been trying to have some structure in his life by engaging in sporting activities. The court heard that he had made rehabilitation efforts by attending the chapel at the prison regularly and completing several courses.

The court also received a character reference from David Wight MP, who said he had known Ebanks for over ten years as their families were close friends. “I have always found Travis Ebanks to be a hardworking and a very pleasant person,” Wight wrote about the convicted child rapist.

Alongside the 13½-year prison term, the court directed that a sexual harm prevention order be put in place to take effect for ten years once he is released from jail.