Locations
Denby Dale, Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, HD8
Description
A sick paedophile who treated his teenage daughter as his 'wife' has been found guilty of sexually abusing her.
Elliott Appleyard, of Gilthwaites Crescent in Denby Dale, raped Carol Higgins 'three or four times a week' during the 1980s when she was aged between 13 and 15.
After a seven-day trial at Leeds Crown Court, a jury of seven women and four men took one hour and 50 minutes to unanimously find the 71-year-old guilty of 15 charges.
The father-of-three was convicted of five counts of rape and 10 counts of indecent assault.
Miss Higgins, who bravely waived her right to anonymity and sat in the public gallery with her partner, brother and other family members, smiled and cried after the verdict was delivered.
She had first reported the abuse to police in 1985, but was told she would be accused of being a liar and it would 'blacken her name' if she pursued a prosecution.
Miss Higgins, who is now 49 and a mum-of-two, went to police again in 2015.
The court heard that after Appleyard's wife left him, he put her engagement ring on his daughter's finger.
Miss Higgins said her father 'wanted to treat me like a wife' and told her they would 'live together happily ever after'.
She said that after the first time he raped her she asked him what her grandfather - his father - would think of what he had just done to her.
She said that he replied:
"He believes the same as me - that grandfather's should break their daughters in like the Indians do."
"He'd try to make me feel like it was normal, he said other friends did it with their fathers," she said.
Appleyard also kept photos of his daughter in her underwear in a box and took her to a tattoo parlour in Barnsley to have a tattoo of a rose between his nickname Sam and his forename tattooed on her shoulder - a tattoo which she later had lasered off.
Peter Hampton, prosecuting, said the abuse had 'destroyed all of her adult life' and she had received counselling for many years.
The jury also heard Appleyard's wife and the children's mother was threatened with a machete for having a 'sex dream' and had a shotgun pointed at her head.
Appleyard was remanded in custody and will be sentenced tomorrow morning (Friday).
A man in the public gallery called Appleyard a paedophile as he was sent down.
Miss Higgins, who now lives in Ackworth, wrote an autobiography titled 'Conquering the Impossible: Making the Dream Come True' which was published in 2015.