Paedophile, 82, claims girls as young as eight ‘enjoyed and wanted’ to be raped
Zoe Drewett for Metro.co.uk
A paedophile who abused girls as young as eight over a 50 year period told a court his child victims ‘enjoyed and wanted’ to be raped.
Peter Brian Ashford was jailed for 12 years and eight months for abusing girls between the ages of eight and 13.
Among the 27 charges he admitted were incidents of rape, attempted rape, sexual abuse and indecent assault, the NZHerald reports.
The 82-year-old, of Auckland, New Zealand, tried to blame his offending on his first victim, saying if she had reported him to the police he would have been stopped long ago.
Judge Bergseng told Manukau District Court on Friday that in his police interview, Ashford said that at the time of his offending all the girls ‘wanted it’.
He said the children ‘enjoyed and wanted’ his sexual advances and that he only did to them ‘what they asked for’.
The judge also said that when speaking to a court report writer, Ashford tried to minimise his offending, saying ‘that on numerous occasions you didn’t know what you were doing was wrong, stating “they don’t teach you those things”,’ the judge said.
‘No victim empathy was present, nor regret or remorse for your actions; you denied causing harm to your victims.’
Ashford began offending in the 60s when he was in his early 30s and all his young victims were known to him and were often left alone with him.
His first victim was just eight years old when Ashford attempted to rape her in her bed.
She told her mother, but she was not believed, the court heard.
The second victim was abused by Ashford for three years in the 1980s, starting when she was 13.
And from 2006 up until after he turned 80 in 2016 he repeatedly sexually abused a group of girls aged between 8 and 11.
A number of his victims – some still young girls, teenagers and some adult women – sat and listened as Judge Bergseng relayed the harrowing details of their abuse.
When sentencing began, the judge had to tell the paedophile to ‘stop staring’ at his victims in court.
Earlier the court heard that Ashford would often abuse his victims in front of other children.
On one occasion he lined up five girls and sexually abused them in turn, he would then ‘reward’ the girls with food or money after threatening them, saying if they told anyone what he was doing they would be punished.
In relation to the more recent offending, Ashford claimed he did not hurt his victims and that they ‘enjoyed it’.
Defending, Wendy Andrews told the court Ashford was ‘very remorseful and ashamed of his conduct’.
‘He said “I ruined it all, I’m so sorry, I’m sick”,’ she told the court.
Judge Bergseng said he read a victim impact statement from each of his victims and their relatives and they could only be described as ‘harrowing’.
‘The effect that your offending has had on all your victims is immense and it will be ongoing,’ he said.
He added that ‘age was no barrier’ for Ashford as he was still abusing girls in his 80s.
He is jailed for 12 years and eight months and has to serve half of that time before he is eligible for parole.
Ashford must also pay reparation for more than £50,090 ($100,000 NZ) to the victims.
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