'˜High-risk' paedophile jailed for raping six-year old girl

John Madin also sexually assaulted the girl on a number of occasions, Derby Crown Court heard.

Clive Stockwell, prosecuting, said the now 63-year-old first rubbed the victim’s chest and then progressed to sexually abusing her over her clothes and then under her clothes before raping her in the mid-1980s.

He said the victim kept the rape and abuse secret until she told her family and then her GP, but the authorities were not alerted.

She finally went to the police last year after confiding to her counsellor what had taken place more than 30 years ago.

Jailing Madin, now of Ferrier Bank, Warton, Preston, Lancashire, for 10 years, Judge Jonathan Bennett said: “There are some elements of what I have read about you that seriously disturb me.

“I have read your pre-sentence report and you do not seem to fully understand why you are here because you have apologised and made an out of court settlement.

“That shows a total lack of understanding of the effect of what you did has had on your victim.

“This was a vulnerable child, a little girl with difficulties and you took advantage of that.

“You even suggest that she was doing this deliberately and that she was sexually active.

“She was six.

“You have some very disturbed thinking and you pose a high risk.”

Mr Stockwell said the offending took place in the mid-1980s.

He said: “He showed her affection which started with kissing and cuddling and then progressed to stroking her chest and then stroking her sexually over and under clothing.

“She told her family and her GP when she was around 16 but this was not pursued.

“The defendant had a sum of money that he used to bribe or compensate her for what he had done.

“But she continued to struggle to cope over the years and he was arrested after she disclosed what had happened to a counsellor.”

Madin was arrested and gave “no comment” answers to questions put to him.

He was charged and pleaded guilty to the rape of a child and 10 other counts of sexually abusing the girl.

Michelle Brown, defending Madin, said her client committed the offences “when he was a much younger man”.

She said: “There is little mitigation is such cases.

“He accepts he was looking for love and affection and appreciates he took it too far.

“It is right to say that the defendant became a Jehovah’s witness in 2011 and there is no suggestion there has been any other offending of this nature over the past 30 years.

“His strongest mitigation is that he pleaded guilty to what he did at the earliest opportunity.”