April 2014
Girl aged 6 living in fear after sex attack by Swansea man
A paedophile who targeted a six-year-old girl has left her “living in fear”.
The girl described to her mother what Peter Barnard did to her last year.
In a powerful statement to Swansea Crown Court, the child’s mother said her daughter, previously bubbly and happy, is now clingy and scared.
She said her school had shown her CCTV cameras to reassure her she was safe and her parents had to take her to the police station for an officer to reassure her attacker was in still in custody.
Barnard, who has a low IQ, attacked the girl twice.
A statement was read by prosecuting barrister Janet Gedrych.
In that, the girl’s mother said: “She has changed. She has become increasingly paranoid in case anybody looks at her.”
He mother said if she saw a man in the street “there’s a look of horror on her face”.
“The incident is always on her mind,” she added. She said her hobbies and schoolwork had both been affected.
She said her daughter had stopped sleeping and eating and would regularly break down crying.
“My daughter is six years old, she shouldn’t be behaving like this, she shouldn’t have to be living like this. She is innocent and is living in fear,” the mother added.
Frank Phillips, for Barnard, said he had concerns that his client, aged 30, from Hafod Street in Swansea, struggled to understand.
He said Barnard had an “extremely low range of intellectual functioning”, but said that his guilty pleas to two charges of sexual assault meant the girl had not had to come to court to give evidence. “The sentence is bound to be a substantial one. The effect of prison on him is going to be very great,” said Mr Phillips.
Judge Paul Thomas then jailed him for six-and-a-half years. He told Barnard: “I have no way of knowing if she will recover to how she was before.”
