THE former custodian of a historic house near Stourport has been jailed for seven and a half years for sex offences against a teenage girl, carried out at the English Heritage property he looked after.

The girl – now a grown woman – said in a victim statement that Steven Yates, now aged 60, “stole her childhood” when he abused her at Witley Court, in Great Witley, near Stourport.

Yates, of the Old Forge, in Tenbury Wells, was found guilty by a jury at Worcester Crown Court of three charges of taking indecent photographs and four of indecently assaulting the girl at the back of the ticket office at Witley Court during the early 1990s.

He was cleared of one charge of taking indecent photographs.

Yates, who is the father of two grown-up, disabled sons, continued to deny all of the allegations, the court heard.

Judge Robert Juckes QC told Yates that he had sexually abused the victim from the age of 13, until she was nearly 16 and it was a “classic example of the seduction of a girl” he had met when she was only 12-years-old.

He had used his “charm” on her to do more and more sexual things with her, including taking a photograph of her naked.

The abuse continued up to “simulated” sexual activity.

The judge said that most of the sexual activity took place in a cabin he used and people working with him, who had seen what he was doing, tried to stop him developing the relationship.

Yates, who was 36 at the time it started, had persuaded her that he loved her.

The judge, who had a letter from Yate’s wife expressing her support for him, added: “You stand now totally humiliated – and you are described by a number of people as a good family man and exceptional father who has done everything you can to support your sons.”

Rebecca Wade, prosecuting, told the court that, besides the cabin, the orangery at Witley Court was also used to abuse the girl and the sexual activity happened several times a week.

Miss Wade added that the victim finally reported the abuse to police after reading in a newspaper that Yates had been given a suspended jail sentence for downloading indecent photographs of children.

It was then that she realised Yates, who she had regarded as her boyfriend, had not loved her all those years before and that the relationship had been “more deviant”.

Miss Wade said that, in her victim statement, the girl said she felt Yates stole her childhood and she felt “sick and dirty”.

Abigail Nixon, defending, said there was no suggestion that the photographs Yates took of the girl were distributed to others.

She added that people who knew Yates spoke of him as “honest, hard-working, reliable and gentle” and his wife would struggle without him.

During the trial, the court head that, when the girl was 15, Yates told her his wife was pregnant.

She told an adult what had been happening and Yates quit his job and left but no further complaint was made at that stage.