Taxi driver jailed for sex assaults on young girlA 58-year-old man has become the fourth member of a Westcountry family to be jailed for child sex attacks after a court case sparked by a police investigation into the tragic suicide of his sister 23 years ago.
Colin Dance, of Roseway, Exmouth, was jailed for seven-and-a-half years in April after being found guilty of six indecent assaults on a girl while she was aged between seven and 14.
His older brother, Maurice Dance, 60, was cleared at a separate trial at Exeter Crown Court of abusing a girl when she was aged just three in the 1980s.
Details of the cases can only now be reported after further charges against Maurice Dance of abusing a girl 30 years ago were dropped and a court order lifted.
The allegations against the brothers were made when police reopened the tragic case of their sister, Belinda Day, known as Binny.
The mother-of-three committed suicide in 1989, aged 27, by jumping off 110ft-high cliffs at Budleigh Salterton. Her body was exhumed last year as part of the fresh inquiry.
Binny's father William, who died in 1972, also served time for child sex abuse and her own son, Carl Leslie, 28, was jailed indefinitely last year for paedophile offences.
Another of her brothers, Adrian "Tommy" Dance, was jailed for 21 years in 2010 after he admitted a string of rapes and sexual assaults also going back to the 1980s.
Colin Dance's trial heard he forced the young girl to take part in sex acts with him after offering to help look after her on days when her parents were working.
He was a truck driver at the time and assaulted her when they stopped in isolated laybys in East Devon.
Judge Graham Cottle told him: "After many years you have finally been brought to book for the sexual abuse you perpetrated against this little girl.
"You treated the victim quite simply as a sexual object. You looked on her purely as a means of obtaining sexual gratification as and when you wanted.
"You were a man of substantial physical presence and it was not necessary for you to use or threaten violence because she was already frightened of you.
"From the age of six or seven you systematically abused her whenever the opportunity presented itself, usually in the cab of your lorry.
"That was an appalling way to behave towards a child of such tender years.
"The effect on the victim was great. Her childhood and adolescent years were ruined."
Colin Dance said the victim had invented the story.
Kelly Scrivener, defending, said there was no evidence Colin Dance had abused any other children since and he had been vetted when he worked as a taxi driver ferrying children from the Deaf School in Exeter.
Haulage contractor Maurice Dance, 58, of Queens Road, Budleigh Salterton, denied seven offences of indecency with a child was found not guilty of all charges after a week-long trial in May. A second set of charges against him were dismissed yesterday after the Crown offered no evidence.
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