20 years for abuser who filmed rape

A serial sex abuser who filmed himself raping one of his victims has been jailed for 20 years.

Clifford Lown, 49, from Epsom in Surrey, forced the woman to have sex with him by threatening to have her children taken away by social services.

She then went to police and told them he had sexually abused her as a child, and Lown handed over the video of him attacking her as an adult in his defence.

Jailing him at the Old Bailey today, Judge Charles Wide QC said: "It was a symptom of your grotesque misunderstanding and your lack of sympathy that you didn't realise how other people would react to such a video, thinking bizarrely that it might help you.

"That just demonstrates how utterly distorted your thinking is."

Lown abused two girls between 1987 and 1997, then later raped one of them as an adult in 2004, and abused a third child in 2010.

He was jailed today for five counts of indecent assault, three of indecency with a child, four counts of rape, and one of sexual assault of a child.

Judge Wide told the court he had gone above the normal range of 13 to 19 years because there were so many aggravating factors in the case, including that there were multiple victims.

Lown was banned from working with children for life and must remain on the sex offenders register for life.

PA