October 2007

Paedophile jailed for abusing victim over seven years

A PAEDOPHILE who drove his Selby area victim to suicide bids by abusing her from the age of five has been jailed.

The young girl had been abandoned by her mother, and her father died during the seven years of sexual assaults at the hands of Steven John Twigg, York Crown Court heard.

Geraldine Kelly, prosecuting, said that since the abuse stopped, the girl has had ten years of counselling and seven of psychotherapy.

“The complainant in this case was about as vulnerable as a young child could be,” said Judge Shaun Spencer QC.

“She has been seriously damaged by this. I heard evidence of seven years of psychotherapy, self-harm, attempts at suicide and being troubled by flashbacks and bad dreams.”

Twigg was jailed for seven years and banned from working with children for life.

He will also be on the Sex Offenders’ Register indefinitely. The chef, 44, now of South Marine Drive, Bridlington, denied nine charges of indecent assault and one of indecency with a child.

At the end of a five-day trial, the jury convicted him on seven charges of indecent assault and one of indecency with a child. They acquitted him on one charge of indecent assault on the judge’s direction and was discharged from reaching a verdict on another.

He was already serving a 15-month jail term imposed at Exeter Crown Court for voyeurism where he took secret films of a girl in a bathroom.

The jury heard the Selby five-year-old girl stayed at times with Twigg’s family after her mother left her to marry another man.

The jury heard Twigg began the abuse when he was in his mid-teens in the late 1970s and it continued for seven years.

For Twigg, Ann Munday said the convictions had destroyed Twigg’s life and career.

April 2007

Guilty of voyeurism

A MAN who secretly filmed a 12-year-old girl as she took a bath is facing a jail sentence.

He was caught by the girl’s mother as he was watching the live pictures of the youngster in a nearby garden shed.

Steven Twigg, 43, of South Marine Drive, Bridlington, denied two charges of voyeurism when he appeared at Exeter Crown Court last Wednesday but was found guilty and bailed with a warning from the judge Iain McKintosh that he faced a jail term.

The court was told Twigg, a shop worker, lived in Newton Poppleford at the time of the offences but had since moved to Bridlington. He was a keen model maker and had hidden a small robotic camera in the bathroom of the girl’s house in Devon and filmed her 13 times over an 18-month period.

The camera was said to have been the eyes of a model robot he was building.

Police had also found pornographic tapes and pictures of women dressed as schoolgirls and nude pictures Twigg had taken in the past, including one of a 16-year-old girl.

Twigg was ordered to sign the sex offenders’ register and was given a sexual offences prevention order banning him from living in the same house as any child under 16 without social services or parental approval after knowing of his sexual offending.

He was also banned from having any photographic equipment, camera, camcorder or any other technology capable of capturing images including mobile phones.