Paedophile Jailed For 17 Years

27 March 2012, 11:13 | Updated: 30 March 2016, 13:50

A man who kidnapped and indecently assaulted two young girls from Newcastle before dumping them in Darlington has been jailed.

Balding grandfather David Bryant, 65, from Ulverston, Cumbria, felt "a sense of grievance'' having been caught so long after the offences, Newcastle Crown Court heard.

He was sentenced to 16 years in prison for four terrifying attacks on victims in Hampshire and Tyneside.

He admitted kidnap and sexual assault after cold-case detectives made a DNA link to catch him 30 years after he first struck.

In the mid-1990s, a girl aged five was playing outside her home in Newcastle on a May evening when she was separated from her family.

When her frantic mother discovered her missing, a search of the local area proved fruitless and the police were called. The girl was found 36 miles away in Darlington, County Durham, around three hours later.

Later that year a four-year-old from Newcastle's west end was abducted as she walked 30 yards to a friend's house.

In the first case in the early 1980s, he grabbed a girl aged five who was playing outside her Hampshire home from under the nose of her mother. He committed a sex act over the child, leaving DNA evidence on her which would prove useful decades later.

The following year a three-year-old was snatched as she played with other children in Southampton.

Hampshire Police detectives began a cold-case review of the sex attacks and through DNA advances, tracked down the predator, having eliminated three of his male relatives from their inquiries.

Judge James Goss, the Recorder of Newcastle, said Bryant was caught after police arrested one of his brothers, believed to be on suspicion of an unrelated offence. He told the defendant: "You feel a sense of grievance about this, believing you had got away with it for so long.''