May 2016 Paedophile who abused girl, 8, then terrified her into silence A PAEDOPHILE who targeted a vulnerable eight-year-old girl for his own sexual gratitude and terrified her into silence for years has been jailed for eight years. There was evidence that the child had been abused before she came into contact with Neil Anthony Swales, 55, said Helen Chapman, prosecuting. When the victim was seven or eight, he sexually attacked her, put his hands round her throat, and made threats about her future to make her keep silent about what he was doing to her. She eventually broke her silence years later when in her late teens, but still constantly checks that he can’t get to her. The barrister said: “She was very frightened of him. He would sometimes place his hands round her throat and threaten her.” In a letter to Judge Guy Kearl QC, the victim spoke of how she felt suicidal, self-harmed and had nightmares about what Swales had done to her. “She was vulnerable and she was targeted,” the judge told Swales at Leeds Crown Court as he jailed him for eight years. “She was extremely insecure, she remains so,” he said. “She was only young and she thought this (the abuse) was normal.” The judge said the abuse happened three or four times over a 12-month period. Swales, of Great Edstone, Ryedale, denied two charges of sexual assault and two of involving a child in sexual activity, but was convicted by a jury at York Crown Court in March. He has been in custody since the trial and will be on the sex offenders’ register for life. Swales had faced allegations that he abused two other girls in Stamford Bridge and York before he abused the eight-year-old and was due to be tried on those charges in August. But following his conviction in March, the Crown Prosecution Service spoke to both and decided to offer no evidence on those charges. March 2017 Paedophile’s partner, Alison Souter, jailed for letter to victim THE girlfriend of a convicted paedophile has been jailed because she tried to persuade his victim to change her story and clear his name. Neil Swales is a sexual predator now serving eight years for four offences of sexual abuse of a girl then seven or eight years old, York Crown Court heard. After a jury convicted him and before he was sentenced, his then partner Alison Souter, 52, sent an anonymous letter to the girl telling her her “lies” would mean she would never know peace, said Chloe Fairley, prosecuting. Souter discussed the letter with relatives, got another woman to write the address on the envelope and posted it away from her then home in Great Edstone, Kirkbymoorside to hide her identity “A lie is a lie is a lie and will always be a lie and the truth will always be the truth,” she wrote. “Only you and God and his angels know the truth and they only want what is best for you. “You have heard of Karma – what goes around comes around. You may be known as the girl who ruined an innocent man’s life.” She also attacked the police investigation against Swales.