Ex-policeman jailed for child sex attacks

A former policeman who committed a string of sex offences against children was jailed for life today after a judge described him as "every parent's worst nightmare".

Daniel Lishman used jobs as a mobile dog-groomer and a TV licensing officer to help him carry out at least eight offences and also posed as a policeman to indecently assault two young girls, Coventry Crown Court heard.

Judge Peter Carr ordered the 37-year-old, of Thorpe Street, Raunds, Northamptonshire, to serve at least 11 years before he can be considered for parole.

Lishman was convicted at previous hearings of a total of 26 counts and asked for four others to be considered.

The charges, including one of rape and 12 of sexual assault, related to a total of 13 victims, including three with disabilities or learning difficulties, as well as hundreds of indecent images of children.

The serial paedophile was arrested in April last year after attacking a 12-year-old girl while pretending to check on a boiler at an address in Southam, Warwickshire.

Judge Carr was told that Lishman, who served with Northamptonshire Police between 1995 and 2002, was linked to a string of other offences after detectives who arrested him found a camera memory card hidden in one of his socks.

The card contained images showing Lishman posing indecently near an eight-year-old girl, who had been "blindfolded" using a pair of taped-up goggles in the back of his dog-grooming van.

Passing sentence, Judge Carr told Lishman: "About ten years or so ago, you began what can only be described as your systematic sexual abuse of your victims, who were in the main very young children."

The judge said it would be not be an exaggeration to describe Lishman as every parent's worst nightmare, telling the former special and regular police constable: "You are in my view an intelligent, but also cunning, devious and extremely plausible man."

Judge Carr added that Lishman had left many of his victims too frightened to go out and also led parents to wrongly blame themselves for what had happened to their children.