Girl suffered five years of sex abuse

2:43pm Tuesday 6th May 2008

A PENSIONER who systematically abused a young girl in the 1970s has been jailed for eight years.

Robert Haynes repeatedly indecently assaulted the child from when she was eight years old up to the age of 13.

And the 67-year-old's sentence comes almost eight months after his brother David Haynes received a 14-year sentence for abusing the same girl and raping other children.

Stephen Dent, prosecuting, told Swindon Crown Court how the abuse started in 1973 shortly before the girl's ninth birthday.

Haynes, who was then in his 30s, started by indecently touching the child and moved on to making her perform depraved sex acts on him.

As a result of the abuse the girl suffered depression and feelings of low self worth, the court was told.

Mr Dent said she would bathe in an antiseptic like fluid similar to Dettol, which though it smelled disgusting, was the only way to make herself feel clean.

She would also use Ajax scouring powder to brush her teeth after she had been forced to perform sex acts on the man.

He said the woman, though now in her 40s, still suffered from self loathing, had eating disorders, self-harmed through alcohol and had suicidal thoughts.

During the years since the abuse he said she had been through a great deal of therapy but was still suffering as a result of what he had done to her.

Robert Haynes pleaded guilty to five counts of indecent assault when he appeared before a judge at Swindon Crown Court.

He pleaded not guilty to a further six counts of indecent assault and three of indecency with a child. They were left to lie on the file.

Haynes, who was living in Swindon at the time of the offences, has been residing at a bail hostel in Milton Keynes.

Oscar Del Fabbro, defending, said his client was a broken man and full of remorse for what he had done.

He said he was in ill health having gone through a quadruple heart bypass operation in 2000 and also suffering from a long-term illness.

Jailing him, Judge Douglas Field said: "She now feels worthless and ashamed: suicidal. It has had the most profound lifelong effects upon her."

Haynes was also banned from working with children for life and was told he must register as a sex offender indefinitely.

In June last year Haynes' brother David, then 55, was jailed for 14 years.

He had been convicted of a number of sex offences including rape on four young girls over a 25-year period.

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