THE girlfriend of a convicted paedophile has been jailed because she tried to persuade his victim to change her story and clear his name.

Neil Swales is a sexual predator now serving eight years for four offences of sexual abuse of a girl then seven or eight years old, York Crown Court heard.

After a jury convicted him and before he was sentenced, his then partner Alison Souter, 52, sent an anonymous letter to the girl telling her her “lies” would mean she would never know peace, said Chloe Fairley, prosecuting.

Souter discussed the letter with relatives, got another woman to write the address on the envelope and posted it away from her then home in Great Edstone, near Kirkbymoorside, to hide her identity.

“A lie is a lie is a lie and will always be a lie and the truth will always be the truth,” she wrote. “Only you and God and his angels know the truth and they only want what is best for you.

“You have heard of karma – what goes around comes around. You may be known as the girl who ruined an innocent man’s life.”

Although the girl’s mother managed to intercept the letter before she had read more than the first line, it still had such a traumatic effect on the girl, now a teenager, that she no longer feels safe in her own home and is taking psychological counselling.

It had increased what she had suffered at Swales’ hands.

The Honorary Recorder of York, Judge Paul Batty, QC, said; “This was a premeditated course of conduct intended to try to persuade a vulnerable victim of sexual abuse to change her account and thus achieve for her partner a reversal of the verdicts that had been returned by this court.”

He said Souter had put “extreme pressure” on the girl.

“Anyone who in these circumstances seeks to suborn a witness in the way you did by the writing of this letter can only expect a custodial sentence.”

He jailed Souter for 12 months. Souter, who managed the Black Swan tearoom in Helmsley, admitted sending an offensive letter.

Her barrister Reginald Bosomworth said Swales’ offences were committed before she knew him.

She now fully accepted that he was a paedophile and had thrown everything to do with him out of her life. But at the time of his trial, she had believed him to be innocent.

“It was a desperate last throw of the dice,” he said of the letter.

In a letter to the court, Souter wrote: “I am not a malicious or a vindictive person. I apologise unreservedly for my actions. I will never do anything like this again.”

After the case Fiona Richards, NSPCC head of region for Yorkshire, said it offered a service for partners of paedophiles and helped them come to terms with the danger posed by the sex offenders close to them.

“Alison Souter’s actions would have added to the trauma of this young girl, prolonging her ordeal and potentially delaying her recovery. But she herself was manipulated by Swales, as so many others would have been.”

Sex offenders rely on trust and the willingness of those close to them to support them, she said.

“So we can perhaps understand the struggle Alison Souter faced,” she said.