Paedophile jailed for 20 years over historic sex offences and child porn

A judge told bearded Clive McKnight that he had no doubt he represented a danger when he committed the offences but thought by the time he is released from jail he will no longer be so.

His perverted behaviour involved sex assaults on four young girls, including raping one when she was 12 and again when she was 17.

He admitted some of the 26 charges he faced but denied others, including the rapes, but was convicted after a trial at Liverpool Crown Court.

Judge Robert Trevor-Jones told McKnight, who swallowed hard as the sentences were announced but otherwise showed no emotion, that impact statements from his victims, “spoke of the profound and devastating impact” his offending had had.

It has affected their self-confidence and self-esteem, left them with memories of fear and one spoke of “feeling her childhood had been taken away.”

He said that McKnight, of Pinewood Crescent, Ince, had groomed the girl he raped and some of the other offences represented a course of sexual conduct beginning when the children were aged between seven and 11-years-old.

He jailed him for a total of 19 years nine months and ordered him to sign on the Sex Offenders Register for life.

Antony Longworth, prosecuting, told Liverpool Crown Court that the offences came to light after McKnight’s computer went in for repairs and after child porn images were discovered the police were alerted.

When this came to light the victims of the sexual abuse decided to come forward and reveal their ordeal and he was arrested in August last year.

Mr Longworth said that McKnight had put the 3,620 indecent images and one extreme pornographic image in the recycling bin on his computer but investigations showed he had software on his computer which would have enabled him to access deleted items.

McKnight, who has no previous convictions, admitted the five indecent image charges. The court heard that some of the perverted images involved a four-year-old girl and the others showed girls aged between five and 15-years-old.