July 2014
Paedophile jailed for ‘ghastly sex offences’ on three-year-old girl
A PAEDOPHILE has been jailed for seven years for “ghastly” sex offences against a three-year-old girl that so distressed her mother she suffered hair loss.
Andrew Lyons, 59, admitted two counts of inciting a child to engage in sexual activity and one of making indecent images.
Hull Crown Court heard Lyons committed the offences in an East Riding town earlier this year.
A judge said he may have got away with it had he not taken photographs of what he was doing on his mobile phone.
There were gasps in the public gallery when graphic details of the offences were given to the court by prosecution barrister John Thackray.
Reading a victim impact statement given by the girl’s mother, Mr Thackray said: “This has had a devastating effect on the whole family.”
Mr Thackray said the mother was being treated for depression and had “suffered alopecia from the worry”.
Christopher Dickens, defending, told Judge Michael Mettyear, Honorary Recorder of Hull and the East Riding: “Your honour, these are particularly repellent offences and the defendant knows he is going to receive a substantial custodial sentence.”
Mr Dickens said the only things in Lyons’s favour were his lack of previous convictions and his early guilty plea, although the court heard he had denied the offences in his first police interview, when he was not represented by a solicitor.
Lyons had told officers he had “done no more than blow raspberries on her thighs”.
He admitted his crimes, however, in a second interview with a solicitor present after the photographs were found on his Nokia mobile phone.
But he said he “deleted them straight away” and drew no sexual gratification from them.
Mr Dickens said: “The harm that it’s probably done to this little child will not be known for some time, because she’s far too young to be properly assessed at this stage.
“The impact on the family is severe.”
Jailing Lyons for seven years, Judge Mettyear said: “It’s always somewhat sad to a see a man, or a woman for that matter, of 59, with no previous convictions, appear in the dock of the crown court, particularly so when the offences bringing that person into the dock are as serious as this.
“These offences were serious and ghastly. You let down yourself and this three-year-old child.
“If the actual abuse wasn’t bad enough, you photographed what you were doing and the only reason for that can be that you wanted to revisit in the future the abuse that you carried out.”
Lyons interrupted the judge at this point, saying: “No, I deleted it within minutes of taking it.”
“I don’t believe you,” the judge said.
Lyons, of Highfield Road, Doncaster, was also made subject to a ten-year sexual offences prevention order.
Judge Mettyear told him: “It was disgraceful, disgusting behaviour and you ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
