A PENSIONER based near Launceston is facing jail after being found guilty of the historic abuse of a child for the second time.

Donald Van Male abused a 12-year-old girl while he was visiting a remote farm near Okehampton in the 1980s but the victim was too confused and frightened to report it at the time.

She described the abuse in two recorded police interviews as being ‘really horrible’ and usually happening when Van Male had been drinking. The sexual assaults consisted of him touching her over and under her clothing.

Former serviceman Van Male has already served a four and a half year sentence for the more recent abuse of a girl of aged 11 and 12 while living in Cornwall. In that case at Truro Crown Court he admitted six counts of sexual assault. 

Van Male, aged 76, of St Clether, near Launceston, denied six offences of indecent assault but was found guilty by a jury at Exeter Crown Court. Judge James Adkins told him he will receive a jail sentence when he returns on August 16.

During the new trial, Mr Simon Burns, prosecuting, said the offences were committed against a vulnerable girl when she was aged about 12 to 13 in the mid-1980s.

He said: “He committed multiple offences against a young victim. He took advantage of her and corrupted her such that she didn’t really know it was wrong, although she felt it was not right.”

He said the victim harboured the hurt from the offences for many years before first making a complaint in 2016. She told police ‘It was really horrible’ and said she had asked her mother to prevent him visiting again.

Van Male told the jury that he had never touched the girl inappropriately and only paid very rare visits to the farm where she was living. He said: “I never touched her sexually.”

The jury were told about his previous convictions from 2019. In that case he became obsessed with another young girl and police found bizarre photographs of her at his home in which he had cut out her face. He claimed it was an art experiment.