A former Inverness prison officer has been jailed for 40 months over “appalling” sex offences against a young girl who was so traumatised she was driven to the brink of suicide.
Melvin Walker was convicted by a jury of using lewd, indecent and libidinous practices towards the child, who was aged between 12 and 16 in the 1980s, as well as indecent assault.
The 78-year-old former RAF serviceman, who was working as a prison officer at HMP Inverness when the offences took place, was also placed on the sex offender’s register for an indefinite period.
Sheriff Sara Matheson told him: “You were convicted of appalling offences committed over a lengthy period of time which had an appalling effect on her.
“During the trial, she gave her evidence very eloquently demonstrating how she had feelings of self-loathing which consequently led to self-harm.”
‘I was confused. I was scared’
Walker’s victim told his trial at Inverness Sheriff Court how he began to target her when she was 12 or 13.
She told the court that the abuse started when they were playfighting but Walker’s demeanour suddenly “changed” and she felt that he was aroused.
“I wasn’t quite sure what happened because at that age I had no idea about sex,” she said.
The woman said that after a number of incidents the abuse “escalated” and Walker later exposed himself to her and induced her to touch him intimately. He also asked her to lie down and abused her while “spooning” her.
She said the abuse left her confused, adding: “We weren’t sexualised back then, we were still very naive.”
The woman detailed how the behaviour ended after Walker attempted to force her to perform a sex act on him, which she refused.
He persisted, but afterwards told her: “That is it, no more.”
Asked how the incidents had made her feel, she said: “I was confused. I was scared. He was a heavyweight boxer, he was a big man.”
Abuser recorded apologising to victim
The woman said that in her youth she had begun to smoke and drink “heavily” and had turned to self-harm in an attempt to cope with her feelings about what had happened.
As a young adult, she said she had been driven to the brink of suicide by the memories of the sexual abuse.
The court was told the woman confronted her abuser on more than one occasion in the intervening years.
A recording of one such confrontation, in 2016, was played for the jury.
In it, she spoke of the “horror” of the abuse and told him: “You realise there is no forgiveness for what you did?”
She said: “Time does not heal this sort of stuff, it doesn’t.”
Walker, of Deerfield Road, March, Cambridgeshire, was heard apologising repeatedly in the recording – but when he took to the stand in his own defence he denied he had been saying sorry for the abuse.
Now a ‘vague acceptance’ of his behaviour
Under cross-examination by fiscal depute David Morton, Walker repeatedly responded “it didn’t happen” when the incidents the woman described were put to him.
Asked if she and a second witness, who told the court Walker had previously admitted the abuse to her, were lying, he said they were “mistaken”.
But a jury took only around two hours to reject his version of events, returning unanimous guilty verdicts on both charges.
Walker’s defence counsel, advocate Bill Adam said there was now “a vague acceptance” by his client of his behaviour.
“He recognises he pushed away the memories of those events because he can’t believe he did them.”