A WOMAN who says she was a victim of notorious Fermanagh paedophile Robert Liddle says she wants the “evil” man locked “where he is no danger to anyone”.

Speaking to the Impartial Reporter this week, Emma Gault has waived her right to anonymity in order to speak out against the man she says sexually molested her many years ago.

In a powerful interview, the mother-of-eight has criticised the justice system for its handling of Liddle’s repeated deviant behaviour.

Liddle (65) from Moorlough Road, Lisnaskea, was given a deferred sentence earlier this month when he appeared at a Crown Court in Downpatrick for his latest offence.

He had been caught in February this year trying to look up school girls’ skirts at a supermarket in Belfast.

The incident was captured on CCTV.

Liddle is currently on a three-year sexual offenders’ rehabilitation probation programme after he breached a court imposed SOPO (Sexual Offences Prevention Order) by going to a swimming pool at a Ballycastle caravan park in July 2011. He had failed to obtain the consent of a police officer appointed as his “designated risk manager” before making this unauthorised trip.

The judge in Downpatrick told Liddle he had considered giving him a “short sharp shock” of a jail sentence but thought it would be preferable if he was allowed to continue with his current probation programme instead.

As a convicted child molester, Liddle was put on the Sex Offenders’ Register in 1999. Court appearances date back to 1983 and 1990.

Ms Gault from Letterbreen said her childhood was ruined after she says Liddle touched her inappropriately while he worked as a gardener close to her home.

Describing how she spent her childhood “living in fear” of the man who was once described as a “high risk” paedophile, she has called for him to be “locked away where he is no danger to anyone”.

More than 20 years on, Ms Gault says sentencing is far too lenient.

“Every time I open the paper I wonder if he is going to be in there. The past just won’t go away. “I could never forget his face -- I could spot him in a huge crowd. He makes me sick.

“And he is back again, offending somewhere else. That’s what really bugs me.” Ms Gault had been living with her adoptive family when she says Liddle approached her.

“He was doing work in and around a neighbour’s house. My adoptive father was close by. Liddle called me over and it went from there,” she said.

Ms Gault describes herself as “one of the lucky ones”.

“I got away -- I knew things weren’t right. I knew I had to get out of there.

“He called me over and asked me to sit on his knee. He had stubble and he was rubbing all around me -- it made me feel uncomfortable”.

She claims being inappropriately touched by Liddle.

“I started to struggle and he was trying to hold me. But I managed to get up. He was acting shifty because he knew my adoptive dad was around. He was so brazen about it. He is a very evil man.

“He asked me: ‘Will you come back? Promise me you will come back.’.

“I said I would.” After she had escaped his grasp she waited until he had left before telling her family.

“I couldn’t say anything or my adoptive dad would have killed him -- there would have been no questions asked!” Ms Gault and her family reported the incident to the police.

“He did go to jail for a while, but it wasn’t very long though. And of course, he got out again.” Ms Gault recalls how, for the rest of her childhood, she was always afraid of running into him.

“Any time I went shopping with my adoptive mum, it was like he always appeared -- he was everywhere.

“I would always hide -- I was just so afraid of him. I was afraid to go anywhere on my own. It wrecks your childhood.

“It’s so hard to explain unless you have been in that position yourself.

“I was always living in fear of this man -- ‘what if he gets me?’.

“At night you might not sleep thinking about what if he comes.

“As a child, you are so vulnerable and you live with that for the rest of your life -- whether you speak out about it or not”.

Ms Gault believes the treatment orders handed down to Liddle by the courts have had no effect.

“In my opinion he just needs locked up and that is it. This probation thing and having ‘help’, it’s no good.

“They give him a certain period of time where he has to keep out of trouble and it’s like he is on the countdown to the time that he can be bad again.

“They say he has a mental condition and offer him treatment. But he plays on it.

“You have to wonder how long was he going up to that supermarket and doing that before people copped on.

“I know someone who drives for Ulsterbus. One morning he (Liddle) got on to go to Belfast, and he said: ‘You can just get right off. You are not getting on this bus’.

“People up in Belfast need to know what he is like too.” Now a parent herself she says she frequently reminds her children to avoid Liddle at all costs.

“I have made them so aware of him -- we don’t keep anything a secret in my house. They all know he is a bad man and they know what he looks like. I refresh their memories every now and again too.” Asked what she would say to the judge who handed down the deferred sentence at Liddle’s most recent court appearance, Ms Gault says: “It might not be printable.” “I would just go mad if I sat there in court. I would say: ‘Look, are you stupid? This happened years ago, this man is not going to stop -- he will keep on doing it. He just needs locked up somewhere that he is no danger to anyone. Treatment doesn’t seem to be working.

“And I would say to anyone who says that is unfair to him; ‘You are bound to have nieces, or have young ones close to you -- this man is a danger to them and that is the reality of it’.

“The only answer is to put him in a cell where he is no danger any more.

“You have to wonder how many more victims are there out there.

“I have often wondered that. It’s a parent’s worst nightmare and you worry all the time.

“I don’t want my children growing up the way that I did, living in fear.

“I was afraid to go anywhere just in case he would be there.” Ms Gault says she has seen Liddle in Enniskillen on a number of occasions.

“I wouldn’t feel afraid now. I have seen him in the supermarket when I am with my husband. But I haven’t told him he is there in case he would confront him.

“When I see him, the hairs stand on the back of my neck. But I try to get on with my life. I’m speaking out because if I don’t, the only person I am protecting is him.”