January 2015
Pervert Leeds engineer found guilty of abusing six-year-old girl
A Leeds engineer sexually abused a young girl as he gave her and a friend a “tour” of renovation work at a Calderdale church, a court heard.
Stephen Barraclough, 54, assaulted the six-year-old as he cleaned dirt off her after they had climbed some steps at the church last June.
The Calderdale youngster, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, gave evidence at Barraclough’s trial last month and a jury at Bradford Crown Court found him guilty of assault by penetration.
Barraclough, of Well House Road, Roundhay, was jailed for three years for the sexual offence, but he was also sentenced to an additional six months in prison after police analysis of two laptops found at his home revealed thousands of indecent images of children and a quantity of extreme pornography involving animals.
Prosecutor Andrew Dallas said Barraclough told police that he had also distributed about 20 to 30 indecent images to three or four other people.
The court heard that police found about 6,000 indecent images of youngsters on the laptops as well as nearly 500 images of extreme pornography.
As part of his sentence Barraclough, who had no previous convictions, will have to register as a sex offender with the police for the rest of his life and he is also subject to an indefinite sexual offences prevention order which restricts any unsupervised access to under 16s.
Jailing Barraclough, Judge Colin Burn said he accepted that the defendant had put his hand inside the girl’s underwear momentarily and that part of his hand had penetrated her genitals. The judge said a prison sentence for the offence was inevitable.
