March 2015 JAILED: Serial child rapist sexually abused young girls for nearly 20 years A MAN who groomed, raped and abused young girls for nearly two decades has been jailed for 13-and-a-half years. A jury took just one hour and 25 minutes to find Christopher Clark guilty of 19 historic child sex offences, including six of rape. Hull Crown Court heard Clark, 50, used “classic grooming techniques” of offering his three young victims “treats, bribes and threats” before repeatedly abusing them between 1980 and 1998. Clark, of 36th Avenue, north Hull, targeted the girls when they were aged between seven and 13, and raped two of them. He showed no emotion as a jury of ten women and two men found him unanimously guilty of all charges. Sentencing Clark, Judge David Tremberg told him: “You have been convicted of a series of offences of rape and serious separate offences against three different complainants. “The abuse in question began when each girl was aged about eight and went on for several years. “In the case of the first two complainants it progressed into full sexual intercourse. “You acted as a depraving and corrupting influence on these children, who accepted what you did to them as being part of their normal lives. “While you may not be the most sophisticated or intelligently gifted of individuals, you had enough about you to ensure the girls’ silence. “You caused, or risked causing, serious emotional harm. Mercifully, none of them appear to have been severely affected by this abuse, as many victims of such offences are.” The judge said that after seeing Clark giving evidence it was clear he was “not the most able or intelligent”. He said Clark was “barely literate” and described him as being “of below average cognitive abilities”. But Judge Tremberg told Clark: “I am entirely satisfied that you well knew from first to last that what you were doing was seriously wrong.” Clark was found guilty of seven counts of indecent assault, six of rape, and six counts of indecency with a child. He will be released on licence halfway through his sentence and must sign the sex offenders’ register for life.