Sex abuse father jailed

The man was sentenced at the High Court in Edinburgh

A 62-year-old man has been jailed for three years for the sexual abuse of his daughter almost 30 years ago.

The High Court in Edinburgh heard that David Smillie regularly abused the girl from the age of four.

At Smillie's trial at the High Court in Glasgow last month, his daughter Dorothy waived her right to anonymity to highlight how sex abuse in the home can ruin a victim's childhood and blight their adult life.

The court had been told how Miss Smillie - who is now 37 - had used a hidden tape recorder to trap her father.

Psychiatric problems

In the intervening years since the abuse took place, she has suffered psychiatric problems and tried to kill herself three times.

Passing sentence, the judge Lord Kirkwood said that although Smillie was a first offender, he had to take a serious view of the offence and impose a significant custodial sentence.

Smillie, from Insch in Aberdeenshire, admitted committing indecent assaults over a four year period between 1968 and 1972 in Dumbarton.