A SCOTTISH child sex abuser claimed links to loyalist paramilitary group the UVF to frighten his young victims it has emerged following his conviction.
Harry Canning (80), who is already serving a three-year sentence for sexually abusing young girls, will be sentenced next month for the repeated rapes of two girls from the ages of 12 to 17.
A jury at Livingston High Court took just 90 minutes to unanimously find him guilty of six charges of raping both victims multiple times when they were 12, when each was 13-15, and when they were 16 and 17.
During the case it emerged he had put a trampoline and a pond in his garden and games consoles and computers in his living room to attract children to his home in Leven, Fife.
The court heard he would tell them how the UVF and UDA blow people's kneecaps off in Northern Ireland.
One of his victims, Ikeyra Kay, now 22, spoke to the Daily Record about her ordeal - which saw her raped at least once a week on average until her late teens - after waiving her right to anonymity.
She said when she tried to break free from Canning, he frightened her with stories about his links to the UVF, showing her a room in his home which was "a shrine to the murderous group".
"He was absolutely obsessed with loyalist paramilitary groups," she told the paper.
"His walls and ceilings were covered in photos and loyalist flags, red hands of Ulster. He said he had paramilitary contacts and even that he did work for the UVF.
"Sometimes he’d go away for a few days, even up to a fortnight. He always said he'd been in Northern Ireland and couldn't say what he'd been doing.
"But when I started to say `no' to him, because he disgusted me, or because what he wanted to do to me was going to hurt, he used threats to keep me quiet and make me do the things I didn't want to do.
"He said he had friends who would hurt me and I believed him. When it came to what he wanted, he was brutal."
Ms Kay said she knows "there are others who have not gone to the police" and spoke to the newspaper "to urge them to tell their stories too, to make sure he never gets out".
"It's not your fault if you're a victim. Only the abusers are at fault but if we don’t report them, they're free to create more victims."
