A paedophile from Cricklewood who abused two young girls entrusted into his care by their unknowing parents more than 20 years ago has been jailed for six years.

Felipe Du, of Mascott’s Close, will spend the rest of his life on the sex offender’s register after being sentenced at Harrow Crown Court on Friday.

The 68-year-old offered to help out two families with after-school childcare when they all lived in Harlesden and molested his two victims in front of other children by making it look like a game, the court heard.

Christopher Stimpson, prosecuting, said the first child was seven when he started abusing her in 1985 which only stopped when the family moved away three years later.

The second victim, in 1992, was 12, with the abuse “worsening over time”.

The court heard she was too numb and scared to speak out in front of others and her pleas for him to stop were ignored when they were alone.

Speaking to the Brent & Kilburn Times after the sentencing, the second victim, now in her thirties, said she reported Du to the police in 2015, when she kept seeing him everywhere suddenly, including in Gladstone Park where she’d take her own children, or while she was out shopping or taking her children to school. She started getting panic attacks as a result and decided to report him.

She said: “I’m relieved but I know it’s not over by a long shot. He stole my innocence. I feel quite aggrieved. I don’t think he’s remorseful, remorse is admitting it in the first place. To deny deny deny...The other person came forward in 2016 and still he denied it. He only pleaded guilty a week before the trial in June. I believe it was a tactic, not remorse. It was so he would get a 25 per cent reduction on his sentence.”

Hoping that other victims of abuse speak out she added: “I told my mum when I was 15 and she confronted him and he admitted it but the tape recorder was in her bag and muffled what he was saying.

“I hope this encourages victims to come forward. Many are afraid of not being believed or are threatened and told not to say anything.”

Du pleaded guilty to nine counts of indecent assault. He was given three years for counts one to four, four years for counts six to eight and six years for count nine, all to serve concurrently with an extra year on licence.