A WOMAN abused by a lorry driver in her childhood told her then boyfriend that she ‘couldn’t stop this darkness’.

The victim, now in her 20s, first reported the sexual assaults she’d suffered from the age of five in 2017, when abuser Martyn Kidd, 59, was arrested for looking at indecent images of children.

In a letter to her then boyfriend detailing the abuse she’d suffered, the woman wrote: “I can’t talk about it because the more I talk about it the realer it becomes. It hurts so, so much. I have to ruin myself or my family. I can’t handle either. I can’t stop this darkness.”

Kidd, who spent time in the army and working in a warehouse but is currently signed off sick, categorically denied abusing the girl.

However, a panel of 11 jurors at Oxford Crown Court took four and a half hours to convict him of indecent assault and sexual assault of a child.

Judge Michael Gledhill QC remanded him in custody. He will return to court for sentencing on September 30, when he faces a lengthy spell behind bars.

During the trial, the jury heard how Kidd molested the girl while she sat on his lap and when he bathed her.

The abuse came to light in 2017, when Kidd was arrested for viewing indecent images of children. He said he’d seen the images while researching why people abuse children, claiming that he’d been sexually abused by his own father.

His victim first told her brother of the abuse she’d suffered at Kidd’s hands. Together, they disclosed the assaults to their mother.

She went round to his home the following day, in December 2017, to confront him about what he’d done.

The mum-of-two said the abuser ‘just went to pieces’ when she told him of her daughter’s accusations.

“He was clutching at space, arms in the air. [He] went to sit down and flopped onto the floor,” she said.

Put in the witness stand, Kidd, of no fixed address, denied the allegations against him. He explained that he had been sexually abused by his own father from the age of four and was later thrown out by his dad when he confronted him about the ordeal he was putting him through.

He said of the moment he heard of the allegations: “I was disgusted. I was just raw.”

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