A PERVERT who sexually assaulted a young girl from aged nine including rape has been jailed for 22 years.
Peter Hayden had denied offences against the girl, including raping her, orally raping her, penetrating her with his fingers and sexually assaulting her.
Hayden (55) of Banks Road, Coventry, also denied having a prohibited image of a child and three charges of making indecent images of children by downloading them.
But following a trial at Warwick Crown Court in May, he was convicted of all the charges in relation to the girl and the images, one of which was believed to have been of her.
And following an adjournment for a pre-sentence report to be prepared on Hayden to consider whether he should be classed as a dangerous offender, he was jailed for 22 years.
But because Judge Peter Cooke sentenced him as an ‘offender of particular concern’ under the Criminal Justice Act, he will not be automatically freed after serving half of the term.
It will be up to the Parole Board to consider whether he can be released at that stage – and if it is turned down, another referral to the Board cannot be made for another two years.
Once Hayden is freed, he will be on licence for the rest of the 22 years and for a further 12 months, and will have to register as a sex offender for life.
During his trial the jury heard that Hayden, who knew the girl’s mother, first abused her when she was just nine as she sat watching television on the sofa at his home.
It began with him stroking her stomach, and he then moved his hand down inside her pants to touch her intimately.
Further abuse followed on occasions when he managed to be alone with the little girl, who was too worried to tell anyone after he said it was her fault and that if she did, he would deny it and her family would believe him rather than her.
Hayden, who showed her pornography on his laptop, then progressed to performing other sexual acts on her, including raping her and forcing her to perform oral sex on him.
Eventually she disclosed to her mother what had happened, but even then could not say it out loud and instead wrote it down.
When he was arrested Hayden denied committing any sexual acts with the girl, claiming her allegations were a fabrication – as he continued to claim during his trial.
But prosecutor Michael Williams pointed out that among 625 indecent images of children on his computer, obtained using search terms including ‘jailbait,’ was one he had taken himself.
It was an intimate close-up of a young girl, taken on the sofa at his home and believed to have been of his victim – but Hayden denied taking the image or downloading any of the others.
At the resumed hearing, the girl told the court: “I felt dirty and disgusting. I took an overdose before the case came to court because of how I was feeling.”
And her mother, who said she had trusted Hayden, said: “I will never forgive him for what he’s done.”
Gareth James, defending, said: “It started with touching and escalated from there to more serious forms of abuse.
“He realises it’s going to be an immediate custodial sentence, and he realises it’s going to be of some length.”
Jailing Hayden, Judge Cooke told him: “You are embarking on spending many of your senior years, after indulging in vile abuse for your own sexual pleasure, in prison. When you were arrested you denied everything and made disparaging remarks about her.
“… You could have pleaded guilty, but you preferred to put her through the ordeal of a trial. The pre-sentence report highlights your total lack of regard for her. You pose an ongoing high risk of serious harm to children.”
