A ‘caring’ father has been cleared or abusing

A ‘caring’ father has been cleared or abusing his
daughter over 30 years ago after a jury heard the woman had
callously made up the story for money.

The daughter, now 35, hoped to get cash from the
Criminal Injuries Compensation Board on her father’s conviction,
the Old Bailey heard.

And the woman was also going to try and sell her story
to the press, it was alleged.

She had approached The Voice newspaper before the trial
started, offering to give ‘an exclusive.

‘
The father, 54, had always insisted her allegations of
repeated rapes and indecent assaults were ‘completely untrue.

‘
And today (Thurs) he held his hands aloft and shouted
‘I’m free, thank you everybody,’ as the jury accepted his story
and cleared him on all charges.

The prosecution claimed the abuse started at the
Edmonton, North London, home when the girl was just five and that
he made her pregnant at the age of 14.

The woman wept in court as she told how she had the
pregnancy terminated.

And she claimed when she had taken biscuits without
permission her father forced her to strip naked and whipped her
with his belt as she knelt on a cheese grater.

The woman said she only told of her alleged ordeal after
30 years because she believed another five-year-old daughter of
the man was at risk.

But the father told the court her story was a heartless
money making ploy.

‘It was made up.

She wanted the money,’ he told the
jury.

He claimed he had never even touched the girl in an
indecent way.

And the father said he knew nothing of the pregnancy
until it was terminated.

The man said there must have been some corporal
punishment in the home, but nothing of the sort his daughter had
claimed.

‘I was always a caring father.

I did two jobs to look
after my family,’ he told the jury.

In his defence speech the father’s counsel Mr Elikkos
Georghiades reiterated the allegation that the woman was trying
to make money from a false story.

The father, now unemployed, was cleared of three specimen
charges of rape, two of unlawful sexual intercourse with a child,
one of indecency with the child and one of indecent assault
between February 1962 and March 1971.

ENDS
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