September 2017 Paedophile found guilty and jailed for 18 years A jury laughed at the ridiculous excuses invented by Plymouth child abuser Alan Dart before he was found guilty and jailed for 18 years. Dart was homeless when he was offered an attic room by the ten-year-old girl’s mother but he soon began to groom her daughter for sex He abused the girl over a three year period beginning when she was just 11. He manipulated the little girl so successfully she became convinced she was in love with him. Dart was so blatant that he had her first name tattooed on his left forearm and posed for selfies in which he hugged and kissed her. Dart, aged 30, denied abusing the girl and claimed the tattoo related to a 19-year-old girlfriend with the same name. But his lies were rejected by a jury at Exeter Crown Court. Some of the jurors laughed as he struggled to explain Facebook messages to the victim sent after they had split up in which he admitted what he had done. He claimed the Facebook account was a fake despite it being in his name and carrying several pictures of him. Dart, of Hampton Street, Plymouth, denied but was found guilty of four counts of child rape, three of sexual assault and five of sexual activity with a child. He was jailed for 18 years with a one year extended licence and ordered to remain on the sex offenders’ register for life by Recorder Miss Ros Collins. She told him:”Out of the goodness of her heart this girl’s mother offered you a roof over your head when you were homeless. She was being kind. “The mother could not see what was happening under her nose and you began a wholly inappropriate sexual relationship between you and a young girl who was ten or 11. “She was child-like, immature and vulnerable. “It was that vulnerability you spotted pretty quickly and exploited without any care in the world about the effect on her or the emotional and psychological damage you may cause by exploiting her. “You used her for your selfish sexual desires, needs, wants and preferences. “I suspect she still does not know the full extent of the psychological harm you did at a time when she thought she was in love with you. “You exploited that fragility to your own ends. The sentence must be very severe.” The girl told the jury how Dart came to live in the house in 2007, when she was ten and lured her into the attic to play computer games. She saw him as a boyfriend and thought she was in love with him at the time. The grooming & sexual abuse continued until she was 14 when her mother threw Dart out of the house and a child protection plan was put in place.