A FATHER convicted of cruelty and sex charges against three girls when they were aged between seven and 11 has been jailed for six years. The 39-year-old computer programmer from Stevenage has gone to jail still protesting his innocence. But his own lawye

A FATHER convicted of cruelty and sex charges against three girls when they were aged between seven and 11 has been jailed for six years.

The 39-year-old computer programmer from Stevenage has gone to jail still protesting his innocence.

But his own lawyer said that he had turned into a "predatory paedophile".

Judge Michael Kay QC told him that some aspects of his offending "beggared belief".

He added: "It is very difficult to get into the mind set of the person able to do what you did. However many times one comes across this type of offending it never ceases to shock, and nor should it.

"This was perverted behaviour of a very serious kind and involved an abuse of trust. There was more than one victim and they were vulnerable.

"You do not accept your guilt and continue to deny the offences. You have shown no insight into the effect on your victims and have shown no remorse whatsoever."

Orders were also made that restrict his contact with children in the future and he must register as a sex offender indefinitely.

He was sentenced at Luton Crown Court on Friday having been convicted by a jury in October. He admitted possessing indecent images of children on his computer. Eighty-two images, falling into the two least serious categories, were found when police first arrested him.

At his trial the jury heard that he was first arrested when a neighbour's daughter made sexual allegations against him in April last year.

But later in the year his own daughter and a stepdaughter told their grandparents of their lives of ill treatment and sexual touching and he was arrested again.

Samantha Cohen, prosecuting, said the man was a heavy drinker and a bully, who would fly into rages.

On one occasion he found hairs in a tub of Twiglets, where his 11-year-old stepdaughter had picked up some she had dropped on the carpet. He urinated into the tub and made her drink from it, the jury were told.

When giving evidence the defendant denied that had happened. He said: "I threw the lot away. I was a bit angry. But the suggestion she has made is disgusting, it is so horrible. I cannot think where she got an idea like that from."

He also denied that he had got his seven-year-old daughter and another daughter to commit separate indecent acts, or that he had behaved in a sexually inappropriate way with the eight-year-old daughter of a neighbour.

Miss Cohen said other examples of his cruelty were that he burnt a treasured toy frog in front of one girl, threatened to throw away all the toys, said he would eat the cat's brains and killed his tropical fish in temper.

He pleaded not guilty to two charges of cruelty and was convicted unanimously by a jury. He also pleaded not guilty to five charges of sexual activity with a child and was found guilty of three. He was cleared of one charge and the jury failed to reach a verdict on the remaining count.

The charges covered a period between December 2004 and April 2005.

Kate Davey, defending, said: "There must have been some catastrophic trigger that turned him from an unremarkable man into a predatory paedophile.

"He and his wife were clearly incapable of adequately bringing up the children. The state of the house was deplorable. But the children have made a remarkable turnaround now they are in the care of their grandparents.