How could this man have the vote? Harrowing story of family nearly torn apart by paedophile - read here
Nov 11 2010 by Sam Casey, Huddersfield Daily Examiner
Paul Shaw
THE grandmother of a girl preyed on by a paedophile has described the torment his attacks caused her family.
The Marsden woman, who cannot be named to protect the identity of her granddaughter, was speaking for the first time since 41-year-old Paul Shaw was jailed indefinitely.
She told how his abuse of the girl – just six at the time – had left her family close to breaking point.
And she expressed outrage at plans for prisoners to be given the right to vote.
She said: “The idea of him being able to vote makes me sick.
“I need to feel like he has had something taken away from him, because he took so much away from my granddaughter.”
Ex-bus driver Shaw, of Elder Road, Bradley, befriended the girl’s mother after meeting her at college.
Later the girl started to visit him and began to refer to him as ‘Uncle Paul’. All the while, he was grooming her and eventually forced her to engage in vile sexual acts.
He also took pictures of the abuse.
The truth only came to light when the girl inadvertently let slip what had been happening to her grandmother in 2008.
The woman said: “She said to me, ‘Shhh, you’ve not got to tell anybody – Uncle Paul says it’s the biggest secret in the world.’
“I felt sick, so angry. I wanted to kill him.
“Maybe I was naive, but I thought how could anyone do that to a child?”
Shaw was arrested in September 2008, but continually denied the allegations.
He had been due to stand trial in January this year but made a series of last-minute admissions, pleading guilty to charges of sexual activity with the girl, assault by penetration, sexual assault and possessing indecent images.
The woman said: “When she found out he had pleaded guilty, my granddaughter just said, ‘Thank goodness for that – he can’t touch any other children now.’
“You see this sort of thing on TV, but you never think in a million years that it will happen to you.”
Shaw was given an indeterminate prison sentence in March and told he would have to serve a minimum of two years.
After that, he will only be released if the Parole Board decides he no longer poses a risk.
Shaw will also be on the sex offenders’ register for life.
The woman said: “The whole thing left our family devastated, it nearly broke us up.
