A CHILD rapist has been locked up after inflicting an appalling ordeal of prolonged abuse on girls in Barrhead.

John Allan began molesting two children from the ages of three and four and continued perpetrating his sex crimes over a 13-year period in the town and in an Argyllshire village.

Allan admitted to police that he “terrorised” one victim.

A judge told Allan, 46, at the High Court in Edinburgh last Friday that he had pleaded guilty to offences which amounted to “a horrific catalogue of abuse”.

He was jailed for nine years.

Lord Boyd of Duncansby told him he had a sexual attraction to prepubescent and pubescent children and pointed out that he had even claimed that the victims would on occasion approach him to initiate sex.

The judge told the landscaper that he had seen the child victims as “sexual playthings”.

Full story on page nine Lord Boyd said he would order that Allan be under supervision for a further four-year period because he posed a risk to young girls.

Allan earlier admitted six charges of indecent behaviour, sexual assault and rape committed at houses in Barrhead and an Argyllshire village between 2003 and last year.

The court heard that a decade earlier he had asked for medication to control his sex drive.

Allan was caught after one victim confided in school friends and then told one of the children’s mothers and police were called in.

He told officers that he had done things to the girls “that should never have happened to them”.

He confessed that “a premeditated rape” and revealed that he had bought a sex toy to use on one of the girls.

Allan claimed that the abuse ended because he had been trying to stop it.

He said: “I’ve been working hard to stop and because I’ve been fighting myself to stop.”

Defence counsel Tony Graham said: “Perhaps the best thing that can be said of him is that he recognised his guilt and instructed pleas of guilty be tendered.”

Lord Boyd told Allan that he would have jailed him for 10 years if he had been convicted of the offences after a trial.

He told the child abuser that he would be placed on the sex offenders’ register indefinitely.