A FORMER Lampeter Comprehensive schoolgirl, who was sexually abused by a school taxi driver 40 years ago, has urged other abuse victims to speak out and seek justice, after seeing her attacker finally jailed this week.

Evan Heddwyn Jones, now aged 71, stood trial at Swansea Crown Court accused of 19 sexual offences.

Jones, now of Harford, Derlwyn, Llandwrda in Carmarthenshire, had denied all the charges but was convicted of four offences of indecent assault on a girl when she was aged between 14 and 16.

Jones was jailed for three years and ordered to register with the police as a sex offender for life.

The court heard that Jones had been paid to collect pupils living on farms near Lampeter and take them to a school bus pick-up point.

The victim, Esther Hoad, was an 11-year-old pupil and lived in Ffarmers when she was sexually assaulted by Jones in the 1970s.

Ms Hoad, now 53, reported the abuse in 2014.

Ms Hoad, who has waived her right to anonymity in the hope it might help other people who have suffered abuse, said: “I was absolutely delighted with the verdict that Heddwyn Jones was found guilty of four sample counts of child sexual assault.”

In her victim impact statement she said: ”I can feel it now, a lifetime later, like a sucker-punch to my stomach, like a rope being pulled tight around my guts, the splintering of my life that day.”

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