Man held 10-year-old girl captive in ‘torture den’ attic as he played out sadomasochistic fantasies

David Challenor faces 22 years in jail

A man who held a 10-year-old girl captive in his "torture den" attic where he electrocuted her while playing out his sadomasochistic fantasies has been jailed for 22 years.

David Challenor, from Coventry, subjected the child to a campaign of abuse which included tying her from a beam, whipping her and giving her electric shocks.

A court heard how the 50-year-old would dress up as a small girl in adult-sized baby dresses and nappies before carrying out the attacks at his home.

Challenor had "various sexual fetishes and fantasies" and when the victim was at his home he took her to the attic where he asked her “to do things to him” including performing oral sex.

After leaving, she was initially too frightened to tell anyone what he had done, but eventually did so.

She confided in someone who reported the incidents to the police.

When he was arrested, Challenor denied the offences and claimed the girl was "a fantasist."

Police searched his property and found bondage gear including sex aids, gaffer tape, dummies, a stun gun and ropes hanging from the beam in his dungeon-style attic.

He even took photographs of the abuse carried out on the child which included attaching clips to give her electric shocks and putting pegs on her body.

Challenor, who is married, accused the girl of lying but officers found the attic just as she had described.

Despite the evidence he pleaded not guilty to charges including false imprisonment, rape, gross indecency, assault by penetration, indecent assault and assault causing bodily harm.

Challenor also denied taking indecent images, making indecent images of children by downloading them, and possessing prohibited images.

But after nine hours at the end of an 11-day trial, the jury at Warwick Crown Court unanimously found him guilty of all but one of the charges of taking indecent images.

Prosecutor Andrew Wallace told jurors: “The defendant will call her a fantasist and a liar about the allegations, but she made them before the police went to the defendant’s house and made a search.”

During the trial, Mr Wallace asked: “So what are the chances that the police on a later date find whips and various things at his house?

“These are not things that are routinely in the knowledge of a child - so when the police go to the address and find items there which support that, that will help you decided ‘is she the liar or is Mr Challenor?'

“Just the kind of things she talked about being used on her are there. She hasn’t invented them, they are there.”

A memory card discovered in a digital camera contained indecent images, including some of the girl, which Challenor denied being responsible for taking.

On another device were indecent images of children which had been downloaded from the internet.

Challenor described in court the supposedly legitimate uses of each of the items found in the attic, as did his wife - but their accounts of what they were for did not always match.

After the jury returned its verdicts, Mr Wallace read out an impact statement in which Challenor’s victim said she had been left traumatised by her ordeal.

Challenor, who the court heard has medical issues, has been the full-time carer for his wife, who attended court in a wheelchair and was now unlikely to be able to remain in their home.

He was jailed for 19 years for the offences against the girl, with a consecutive three-year term for the images, and was ordered to register as a sex offender for life.

Additional reporting by SWNS