A warped pervert who held a young girl captive in his “torture den” attic where he electrocuted her while playing out his sadomasochistic fantasies has been jailed for 22 years.
Depraved David Challenor, 50, subjected his victim to a horrific campaign of abuse which included trying her from a beam, whipping her and giving her electric shocks.
A court heard the twisted thug would dress up as a small girl in adult-sized baby dresses and nappies before carrying out the sickening attacks at his home.
Police searched his property and found bondage gear including sex aids, gaffer tape, dummies, a stun gun and ropes hanging from the beam in his sex dungeon-style attic.
He even took trophy photographs of the abuse carried out on the 10-year-old girl which included attaching clips to give her electric shocks and putting pegs on her body.
Married 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.
Despite the damning evidence 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, of Coventry, 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 (20/8) , 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 told jurors: “The defendant will call her a fantasist and a liar about the allegations, but she made them before the police went to the defendant’s house and made a search.”
Mr Wallace 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.
When he was arrested, Challenor denied the offences and claimed the girl was “a fantasist.”
During the trial, Mr Wallace asked: “So what are the chances that the police on a later date find whips and various things at his house?
“These are not things that are routinely in the knowledge of a child – so when the police go to the address and find items there which support that, that will help you decided ‘is she the liar or is Mr Challenor?’
“Just the kind of things she talked about being used on her are there. She hasn’t invented them, they are there.”
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.
Challenor described in court the supposedly legitimate uses of each of the items found in the attic, as did his wife – but their accounts of what they were for did not always tally.
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.
