A SELF-CONFESSED paedophile who subjected his then eight-year-old sister to a prolonged period of sexual abuse was jailed for 18 months at the Crown Court in Derry yesterday.
The 55-year-old abuser, who committed the offences between January 1973 and December 1975 in the family home, cannot be named because of the nature of those offences.
The defendant’s wife wept in court when her husband was jailed for carrying out 12 acts of indecent assault on his sister. Other similar charges were left on the court files.
Sentencing the defendant, Judge Piers Grant described the abuse, which happened twice a week for three years, as immoral, depraved and disgusting.
“When this young girl mentioned the abuse to her mother, nothing was done.
“The abuse only stopped when the victim’s older sister became protective of her,” he said.
Judge Grant said he was “constrained and limited” to the maximum sentence of two years which was in place at the time of the abuse. That maximum sentence was increased to 10 years by parliament in 1989. He revealed the abuser had been convicted of similar offences in 1983.
The defendant, who will be on probation for three years after his release from prison, was also placed on the Sex Offenders’ Register for 10 years and ordered to comply with the conditions of a Sexual Offences Prevention Order, also for 10 years.