Michael Hilton 53

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The victim of a sexual abuser said she wanted him to go to prison ‘so he can’t hurt me’.

Michael Hilton, 52, was jailed for six years at Oxford Crown Court on Friday (August 18) for repeatedly sexually assaulting his victim by touching her.

The Greater Leys man had used his acquaintance with the girl’s mother to sexually abuse her daughter over a number of months when she was barely of primary school age.

In a moving victim impact statement, which the victim read from behind a screen in courtroom three, she said: “I just want the whole thing to finish. I want Michael to go to prison so he can’t hurt me.”

She needed ‘all of this’ to be ‘over and done with’, she said. “I’m not happy. I’m not sad. I’m just numb.”

The girl said she wanted to do something in the future to help those who found themselves in the same position she had been in.

“I would really like to be a lawyer to help people like me,” she said in a quiet voice, muffled still further by the curtain behind which she spoke.

The girl, who is still under-16, cannot be identified for legal reasons.

Sentencing, Judge Maria Lamb said Hilton ‘exploited’ the trust the girl’s mother had placed in him.

“The situation was compounded as far as she was concerned by the fact you told her not to say anything,” she said.

“She said you said to her something bad would happen to her and you would both get into trouble and you, that is what you said to her, that she would get ‘really hurt’.

“That obviously had an effect upon her, because it was several years before she felt able to speak out even though she had an increasing awareness as she got older that what had happened to her was wrong.

“It was not until 2021 she felt able to voice to others what had occurred.

“I have heard her read out to this court this morning her victim personal statement and it makes for sad listening.”

Hilton, of Woodpecker Green, Oxford, was found guilty of seven counts of sexually assaulting a girl under-13. He had previous convictions in the 1980s and 90s for dissimilar matters.

Defending, Gareth James said his client was supported by a number of character references. In his own letter to the judge, Hilton asked her to consider not sending him to prison immediately but deal with his case in ‘alternative ways’.

Hilton’s advocate, Mr James, challenged the probation service’s assessment that his client was a medium risk of reoffending, suggesting it was in fact low.

He conceded that a prison service was inevitable, but asked the judge to keep the term as low as possible ‘commensurate with her judicial responsibilities’.

The defendant will spend half his six year sentence in jail before being eligible for release on licence. He will remain on the sex offender register for life.