A judge said he wished he could give a prison term of hundreds of years to a man who raped and molested two girls.
Alan Gregory Norster abused the young girls decades ago and ensured their silence by manipulating and threatening them.
Judge Les Spittle told the 56-year-old: “I wish I could quite frankly give you a sentence on every one of these offences and add them all up.
“If I did that I’d end up with an American-type sentence of hundreds of years.
“I can’t do that. I’m bound by the way our system works."
Judge Spittle jailed Norster for 12 years at Teesside Crown Court today.
He branded the defendant a “wicked man” and passed a string of concurrent sentences on 14 sex offences.
The two victims, now adults who cannot be named for legal reasons, listened in court to the harrowing details of their ordeals.
The first said she didn’t bear her childhood tormentor a grudge and did not wish him any harm.
She said in a statement read out in the courtroom: “My only hope is that you too will eventually be able to get the help and support you need to move on with your life and be at peace.”
The judge said this was “amazing” and showed “a compassion that frankly I doubt I could”.
Norster was a teenager living in Middlesbrough and Skelton when he abused the first younger girl, said prosecutor Christine Egerton.
When she tried to tell what happened to her, it was dismissed and she was told: “Don’t be daft.”
When she threatened to make a complaint, Norster said: “You’ll be taken away. No one is going to believe you.”
He trapped her and raped her, ignoring her screams.
The victim later said: “It was horrible and painful. I just cried and cried.”
When challenged by others, Norster said: “I didn’t do anything to her. She’s lying.”
He raped her again and responded to her hysterical crying by saying: “What are you crying for?
“Don’t be stupid. Nothing’s happened. It’s all in your head.”
The girl contemplated jumping out of a window, said Miss Egerton.
She later said: “I couldn’t tell anybody and I just wanted to die because I just felt dirty and thought it was my fault.”
When she was older she confronted him and he said he was sorry.
She replied: “You can’t ever say sorry for what you did. You ruined my childhood. I never had one. You made me out to be a liar.”
In her impact statement, she said: “I spent my childhood feeling nothing but self-loathing, shame and disgust because of what he did to me.
“I have carried the burden of what he did to me every single day of my life.
“I hope now this horrendous secret is out in the open that in time with support I can finally learn to trust others and finally find peace within myself, to enable me to enjoy what time I have left.”
Norster abused the second young girl when he was an adult.
He touched her despite her obvious pain and pleas for him to stop, and threatened her to keep her quiet. He then raped her.
When the victim told her boyfriend what had happened at the time, she too was not believed.
She said the abuse later affected her relationship with her children, she felt miserable and could not have people sitting too close to her.
Norster carried on the sex attacks on her despite a conviction and probation order for indecently assaulting another girl.
The court heard how he was affronted by having to attend a sex offenders’ course with “all them paedophiles”.
The two girls told police of their experiences years later and Norster was arrested.
After trying unsuccessfully to trade with limited pleas, and a suicide attempt, he admitted 10 charges of indecent assault, three of rape and one of attempted rape.
In mitigation, Brian Mark said Norster felt genuine “utter remorse” and shame for his actions.
He was sectioned and made a “proper attempt” to take his own life.
Mr Mark said Norster was twisted, warped and irreparably damaged by experiences in his own childhood where he was bullied and “treated worse than dog dirt”.
“He was never a man at peace,” said the defence barrister.
“He didn’t have a normal life and he perpetrated these horrible acts.
“He apologises to the victims. He can’t look at himself without feeling disgusting.
“Whatever problems he has, his actions have done incalculable damage to others. He accepts that totally.”
Judge Spittle said Norster’s crimes showed “a persistent, appalling pattern” with “many manifestations of indecent, degrading behaviour” and “expressed and implied threats”.
He said Norster isolated and preyed on the victims, blighting their lives.
He said the victims had faced the “dreadful” prospect of a trial, but he gave Norster credit for pleading guilty, preventing them having to give evidence.
He took into account Norster’s troubled background but said he still had a choice.
Norster, lately of Christon West View, North Shields, was jailed for 12 years and given an indefinite sexual offences prevention order banning him from having contact with girls under 16.
He will be banned from working with children and will be on the sex offenders’ register for life.
