Paedophile’s victim ‘lucky to be alive’

PAEDOPHILE Peter Voisey’s six-year-old victim was “lucky to be alive”, a leading criminologist said yesterday.

Professor David Wilson said such horrific crimes were mercifully rare, and have remained so since the early 1970s.

But the author, who studies sex offenders and their rehabilitation, said many predatory abusers in Voisey’s position would have gone on to kill their victim, given the level of control he had over her once she was forced into his car. “Without wishing to scare anybody, she is lucky to be alive,” he said.

“It could just as easily have been that he drove her away and we never heard anything from her again.

“The fact that she was returned shows that this was very bizarre, risky behaviour and not at all the pattern of how paedophiles get access to children.

“It is a very, very unusual case and he is a very risky man. The kinds of behaviour he has shown are very dangerous.”

Detective Chief Inspector Jim Napier, who led the inquiry, said: “It is very unusual to have a child kidnapped, sexually abused and returned alive. Our experts told us there have been only two similar cases.”

Prof Wilson said it was particularly unusual that Voisey had no prior knowledge of the girl he grabbed.

He said Voisey’s decision to take his victim back to the area where she lived reminded him of Scottish child killer and paedophile Robert Black, who murdered Susan Maxwell, Caroline Hogg and Sarah Harper.

Prof Wilson urged parents to remember that these cases were rare, and that while six children a year were abducted by strangers, two a week were killed by family members.