Paedophile who 'raped girl on camera and forced her to have sex with dog' arrested after going missing during trial

David Hart is facing jail after being convicted of 16 offences spanning 14 years

Paedophile David Hart was convicted of 16 offences at Swansea Crown Court (South Wales Police)

A child rapist who forced his victim to have sex with a dog has been arrested, after he went missing on the last day of his trial.

David Hart was found guilty of a string of “sickening and gravely serious” offences against the girl, now an adult, over a number of years.

The 60-year-old was not present for the final day of his trial at Swansea Crown Court and it is thought he had taken himself to hospital, from where he later went missing.

Hart, of Chemical Road, Morriston, in Wales, was arrested on Wednesday night, police said.

The girl, who was just 11 or 12 years old when the abuse began, said some of it was broadcast live in internet chatrooms.

She gave traumatic interviews to police in which she said she blamed herself for being “too afraid” to stop him.

In the interviews, which were summarised in court by Judge Geraint Walters, she described what he called “some of the gravest sexual offences”.

The abuse also happened on camera with other people watching, initially, on a one-to-one basis. But later Hart moved to an internet chatroom where “a few hundred people would watch”, the court heard.

On another occasion, according to Judge Walters, the victim said that in a portable cabin: “He made me have sex with a dog and wanted me to do it again. It got to the point I had to hurt the dog to stop him.”

She also said she believed she may have been drugged.

Hart denied 16 charges alleged to have taken place between 2001 and 2015, including 12 counts of rape, two of indecent assault, one of assault by penetration and one of assault occasioning actual bodily harm.

He was found guilty on all counts by a jury at Swansea Crown Court on Tuesday, by a majority verdict of eleven to one on each.

Hart had attended the trial which began last week, but failed to turn up to court on the day the jury would be sent out, as he had been admitted to Morriston Hospital that morning.

He awaits sentencing but was not listed at Swansea on Thursday.

Judge Walters had reminded the jury that Hart, a taxi driver, was a man of previous good character, and had denied allegations he had asked a former partner to engage in sex acts with a friend’s Doberman dog.

He also said that under cross-examination he had claimed to be physically unable to have sex at the time the allegations took place.

And Judge Walters reminded them of character references to the court, in which Hart had been described by friends as “a polite man, very happy to help. I’ve never heard him raise his voice, even to his dog”.

A spokesman for NSPCC Wales said: “Hart committed sickening and gravely serious offences against his victim, many of which were inflicted on her when she was a child. Abuse ruins childhoods and his actions have clearly had a significant effect on his victim into adulthood.

“We hope she is now receiving full support to recover as well as satisfaction from knowing her evidence in court helped secure Hart’s conviction.”

Additional reporting by agencies