April 2005 Teaching assistant jailed for raping girl A teaching assistant was today starting a five-year jail sentence after a jury found him guilty of raping a 14-year-old girl. The trial at Bradford Crown Court heard how Neil Clough, a married father of four young children, had developed an infatuation with the girl before he attacked her in the back of his car. Clough, 37, who also worked as a playscheme volunteer, denied the offence. But the jury of three men and eight women returned unanimous guilty verdicts on charges of rape and sexual activity with a child. Timothy Capstick, mitigating, told Judge Peter Benson that Clough’s life was now in “ruins” and said it was likely that he would now lose the family home because his wife would be unable to keep up the repayments on the mortgage. He said his client, who had no previous convictions, had for a number of years before this offence put a lot into the local community. Ordering him to sign on the sex offenders’ register for life, Judge Benson told Clough that he had been convicted on what he described as “clear evidence.” “You engineered a situation, then you assaulted her and then raped her,” he said. “That was a very serious matter and was aggravated by the difference in ages.” The five-day trial had heard how Clough, of Gaisby Drive, Windhill, Shipley, had flirted with the girl, who cannot be identified for legal reasons. He had sent her a series of text messages calling her “love” and “babe” in the days before the attack. Then on a night in August last year when the teenager was in the back of his car, Clough asked her for a goodnight kiss. She refused but he climbed into the back seat and assaulted her. Sharon Beattie, prosecuting, told the jury that the girl “simply froze.” “He was saying ‘Do you like it?’,” she said. “She genuinely could not speak. Then Clough forced himself on her and raped her. The court had heard that the youngster had blamed herself, saying she should have slapped him and got out of the car and did not tell anyone what had happened straightaway because she was scared that she would be in trouble. Judge Benson banned Clough from ever working with children again. He also banned him from having any unsupervised contact with children, other than his own, for the rest of his life.