by Keith Hunt

A pervert who sexually abused a young girl 35 years ago has been jailed for five years four months.

David Brown was told by a judge he had to apply to law as it was in the mid-1970s for indecent assault offences.

“If charged today for your criminal offending, the sentence this court could properly impose would be measured in many years,” said Judge Jeremy Carey.

“At the time of your offending these offences carried a maximum sentence of two years imprisonment.

“By present day standards it will be regarded by right-minded people as ridiculously low, because of the criminality involved and the effect on the victim of this kind of sexual abuse.”

But the judge said he had no hesitation in passing consecutive 20-month sentences on the three charges Brown, 62, of no fixed address, admitted.

He imposed an additional four months for possessing over 3,000 indecent images of children, most of which were at the lowest level of one.

Alistair Keith, prosecuting, said the images were found on Brown’s computer equipment when police raided his then home in Codrington Crescent, Gravesend, in August last year.

Mr Keith said the abuse of the girl involved him committing various sex acts.

Richard Guess, defending, told the court: “He is now a pariah. He has nobody. He has no family.

"They don’t want to know him. He has a bleak future, probably because of his own doing.”

Judge Carey said it was sexual offending of a serious kind.

“You indulged your sexual depravity to a substantial extent,” he continued.

“You abused a child at the most grave level. You used the threat of violence to get your own way.

"You have quite rightly been ostracised by friends and family, and you deserve that.

“You now present a pathetic character at the age of 62.”

Brown will remain on the sex offenders’ register for life.