The mum of two girls targeted by a paedophile said she doesn’t know whether she will ever be able to tell them about the incident.
Luke McHugh climbed through an open window into the girls’ bedrooms in Knowsley to sexually assault them but was disturbed by their father before he could attack them. He was jailed for ten years at Liverpool Crown Court on Friday.
McHugh was not supposed to be able to leave his secure accommodation without supervision because of his risk to children but he tampered with the window of his bedroom to escape and target the family home. In a statement to the court on Friday, the girls’ mother said her relief at him being stopped was tempered by constant worry over what could have happened to her children.
READ MORE: Paedophile breaks into family's home to sexually assault little girls
The woman explained how confusion over the break in and what may have motivated it changed to horror when the police finally identified McHugh from CCTV weeks later. He was in secure accommodation after a number of previous convictions, linked to the sexual abuse of children.
One saw him demand an eight year old girl send him naked pictures of her and threatening to kidnap her if she did not comply. Describing the moment officers confirmed McHugh’s identity to her, the girls’ mum said her life “changed forever”.
She said: “This man wanted to make our wonderful and precious girls his victims. This really is any parent’s worst nightmare.”
She paid tribute to her husband for hearing McHugh enter their home and for scaring him off before he was able to attack either of the girls and for doing so without waking either of them up. However, she said she still feared that her children may have been aware of part of the incident and said she and her husband did not know how she would answer if they asked her about it.
She said: “I don't have the words to explain the torment I feel knowing he was moments away from forever changing their little lives purely for his perverse and abhorrent sexual gratification. The events have been truly traumatic and the guilt I feel for not having protected the people who need me the most is overwhelming. My husband and I have yet to decide if, when they're adults, we will tell our daughters the truth when they ask 'but why was that man in our bedroom last night Mummy?”
McHugh initially denied that he was breaking into the home to commit a sexual offence and had originally been charged with burglary. Yet the judge in his case, Robert Trevor-Jones, told him he had no doubt that he would have sexually assaulted the girls before jailing him for ten years.
Speaking after the case, district crown prosecutor Keith Drummond of CPS Mersey-Cheshire said prosecutors were determined to prove McHugh’s intent. Mr Drummond said: “The Crown Prosecution’s Service’s case was that Luke McHugh was intending to commit a child sexual offence when he broke into this house.
“He has seen items outside and inside the house that indicated children lived there and targeted it accordingly. This, combined with the items found in his own accommodation , his sexual interest in children and previous record for sexual offences against children, made the CPS determined that the charges he faced addressed the full extent and intention of his actions on that night.”
