By Georgia Diebelius
Chilling images have revealed a first look into the torture den attic where a paedophile held a young girl captive while playing out his sadomasochistic fantasies. David Challenor was jailed this week for 22 years after being convicted of subjecting the 10-year-old to a horrific campaign of abuse. Warwick Crown Court heard the 50-year-old had a fetish for dressing up as a small girl in adult-sized baby dresses and nappies.
He even took trophy photographs of the abuse carried out on the young girl, which included attaching clips to give her electric shocks and putting pegs on her body. Police searched his property in Coventry and found bondage gear including sex aids, gaffer tape, dummies, a stun gun, candles and a bondage kit.
Today, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) released photographs of the loft where he carried out his depraved acts at the home he shared with his wife. In one photo, a red dress can clearly be seen on a coat hanger in the cluttered attic while another shows ropes and chains hanging from the beams. Others show a tool box filled with whips, ropes, candles and lotions. Challenor accused the girl of being a a liar and a fantasist when he was arrested – but officers found the gruesome attic kitted out just as she had described.
He pleaded not guilty to charges including false imprisonment, rape, gross indecency, assault by penetration, indecent assault and assault causing her actual bodily harm. Challenor also denied taking indecent images of her, making indecent images of children by downloading them, and possessing prohibited images.
But after nine hours at the end of an 11-day trial the jury at Warwick Crown Court unanimously found him guilty of all but one of the charges of taking indecent images. Sentencing on Monday, Recorder Nicholas Syfret QC said: ‘It is hard to comprehend how you could behave with such depravity. ‘The harm done by you to her is hard to overestimate.’ Prosecutor Andrew Wallace said most of the charges related to the ordeal to which Challenor subjected one girl, who lived in the Stoke area of Coventry at the time.
He said Challenor had ‘various sexual fetishes and fantasies’ including dressing up as a small girl himself. Pretending to be a little girl called Lucy, when the victim was at his home he took her to the attic where he asked her ‘to do things to him’ including performing oral sex. After leaving, she was initially too frightened to tell anyone what he had done – but eventually did so.
She confided in someone what had happened, which was reported to the police who interviewed her towards the end of 2015. In addition, on a memory card in a digital camera were indecent images, including some of that girl, which Challenor denied being responsible for taking. And on another device were indecent images of children which had been downloaded from the internet. After the jury returned its verdicts, Mr Wallace read out an impact statement in which Challenor’s victim said she had been left traumatised by her ordeal. Robert Sandford, defending, said: ‘She is damaged, I make no issue about that.’ He said Challenor, who has medical issues, has been the full-time carer for his wife, who attended court in a wheelchair and was now unlikely to be able to remain in their home. Challenor was jailed for 19 years for the offences against the girl, with a consecutive three-year term for the images, and was ordered to register as a sex offender for life.
Source metro.co.uk
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