Locked Up, Key Thrown Away for GTA "Teen Sex Fiend"

The Daily Mail reports that 19-year-old Ryan Chinnery (displaying bling at left) has been sentenced to an indefinite period of incarceration after pleading guilty to a series of sexual assaults in Kent. GamePolitics previously covered the start of Chinnery's trial in September.

As it does so often these days, Grand Theft Auto gets the blame:

[Chinnery] prowled streets in his car targeting innocent women he thought were prostitutes - imitating scenes from the controversial [Grand Theft Auto] game in which a man drives around and attacks call girls...  Officers found a copy of the 18-certificate Grand Theft Auto during a swoop on the home Chinnery shared with his girlfriend - and he initially insisted to detectives that he had been playing on his computer at the time of the attacks.

Prosecutor Eleanor Laws told a jury last month how Chinnery's obsession with Grand Theft Auto, which has sold some 35million copies, 'may go some way to explaining his attitude towards women'. Miss Laws added: 'Prostitutes in it can be exposed to violence. There may be some connection with the defendant admitting spending a lot of time playing that game.'

The judge, on the other hand, seemed to relate Chinnery's crimes to an obsession with porn, but did give GTA a mention. The Kentish Express reports:

Judge Philip Statman said: "What most troubles me is the mirror conduct between pornography and that which he later does. It is as if spurring on comes from the pornographic material.

"I know part of this case referred to something called Grand Theft Auto. While it appears the defendant does not accept it influenced his conduct on that particular evening, it could not have helped him, I would have thought, in all the circumstances of the case."