Former cop jailed for child sex offences

Steven Saxon, who is 57, attacked the girl over a two year period when she was aged between 10 and 12 years old.

He was found guilty in July of seven offences of sexual assault on a girl under 13 following a trial.

Saxon, of Redding Grove, Crownhill, spent 31 years with Bedfordshire Police and worked in Leighton Buzzard.

Luton Crown court heard he had massaged the girl and touched her bottom and breasts.

Toby Long, defending, said his client had always maintained he was an innocent man.

He told Judge Michael Kay QC: “In accordance with my client’s instructions you will be sending an innocent man to prison.

“It’s his case that he told the truth at his trial.”

Judge Kay told Saxon he had groomed the girl.“Your position is that I am sending an innocent man to prison, but that is not the verdict of the jury and I abide by the verdict of the jury,” he said.

The court previously heard how Saxon assaulted the child seven times in Leighton Buzzard between July 2010 and July 2012.

Laura Blackband, prosecuting, told the hearing that after two years of sporadic assaults ‘something snapped’ and the girl told her mother.

Saxon maintained he had simply given the child a hug but she “overreacted”

He said: “Her mother came in and (the child) said ‘Shut up mum go away’.

“There was a bedraggled child in front of me.

“I said ‘Your mother was only trying to help you’ and I hugged her.

“I put my head against her head, it was an emotional hug”.

Saxon told the jury that the child, who could not attend the trial due to health reasons, is a ‘compelling liar’.

He added that the charges against him ‘greatly hurt’.

He will now be placed on the Sex Offenders’ Register.