Schoolgirl's diary helps jail rapist

A schoolgirl's secret diary entry led to a babysitter being jailed for seven years. Former bus driver Havil Day, 52, first raped the girl at her home in Walthamstow when she was five.

The paedophile went on to rape her over a two-year period, but his crimes went unpunished for nearly a decade as the "psychologically scarred" victim kept the abuse secret.

But Day, who has a previous conviction for sex with a child, was caught after the victim's mother found her now teenage daughter's diary and read: "Things that get me down - rape," Snaresbrook Crown Court heard.

Day, of Walthamstow, was convicted of four specimen counts of rape in May.

Jailing him for seven years, Judge Simon Wilkinson said that it had been a "gross breach of trust." Day was ordered to sign on to the sex offenders register for life.