A MAN who subjected an 11-year-old girl to a horrific sexual attack in the 1980s has been jailed 28 years later thanks to DNA evidence.

Adrian de Havilland, formerly Adrian Goodenough, leapt from a bush holding a dagger and wearing a balaclava as two girls aged 10 and 11 cycled along a footpath near Didcot Power Station in April 1982.

The serial sex offender, who went on to be convicted of 51 indecent exposures and five indecent assaults between 1982 and 2001, forced the older girl to strip at knifepoint before subjecting her to a serious sexual assault while her friend held her hand.

The 45-year-old, then 17, was arrested at the time but never charged. But in March this year ‘cold case’ detectives matched De Havilland’s DNA to the scene and arrested him at his new home in Wigan, Lancashire.

He was sentenced at Oxford Crown Court yesterday having earlier admitted false imprisonment, indecent assault and two counts of indecency with a child.

Kevin West, prosecuting, said the girls were cycling on a footpath between Harwell and West Hagbourne on their way to sketch near the power station on April 24, 1982.

He said De Havilland, who was wearing a full-face balaclava with only his eyes visible, produced an eight-inch dagger and grabbed hold of the girl as she begged “please don’t do this to me”.

A statement from the victim, who watched from the public gallery, said she had suffered the effects of the attack ever since and had slept with a kitchen knife under her pillow for security.

De Havilland, who is now married with a family, was jailed for four years in 1987 for threatening to kill a policeman with a crossbow in Wallingford.

Charlotte Holland, defending, said: “At the age of 17 he was a young man from a difficult family with difficult relationships.

“For what it’s worth, Mr De Havilland apologises.

“He accepts the effect his offending will have had on the victim.”

Judge Tom Corrie said his powers were constrained by the sentencing guidelines for the offences at the time.

Jailing De Havilland for three years and three months and ordering him to sign the sex offenders’ register for life, he said: “Whatever sentence I pass will not satisfy the views of anyone who takes a public interest in such offences today.”