A lecturer spared jail after hoarding child porn is finally behind bars for sex attacks on a British schoolgirl

Garry Willey:

Japanese-born law graduate Iasao Yasuhara was a distinguished academic heading a prestigious language department at Newcastle University.

His downfall began in 2003 when he admitted surfing the net to build up a vast library of pornography - including 1,500 indecent images of children.

Yasuhara, sacked by the college, kept his freedom on a community rehabilitation order with a condition of sex offender treatment.

But no-one knew then he had spent years preying on a young girl, Newcastle Crown Court heard.

And he was only caught when the victim - so traumatised she created an imaginary friend to share her suffering - at last broke down to a teacher last year.

Yasuhara, 45, formerly of Jesmond, admitted five charges of indecent assault.

He denied two further allegations of raping the girl and those were ordered to be left on the file.

Judge Tony Lancaster said he accepted shamed Yasuhara had made progress acknowledging his offences with sex offender experts and had shown real remorse.

But imposing a five-year jail sentence with three years supervision on release he said: "It's obvious your victim has been deeply distressed by your behaviour and abuse.

"This is as bad as cases of this type get. The sentence has to be a custodial one because these are very serious offences."

Yasuhara was also banned from ever working with children. He must register as a sex offender for life.

He had been able to hide his attacks on the youngster when she was under 10 by telling her to keep the abuse a secret, the court heard.

"He has benefited from the sex offender course," said Robert Adams, defending. "He now clearly realises what he has done is wrong and he is extremely candid about it."

Yasuhara qualified in law in his homeland before lecturing in Japanese at Newcastle University and becoming heard of the Department of Applied East Asian Languages in 2001.

He was elected vice chair of the British Association for Japanese as a foreign language in 1999 and served as chief editor of the organisation's annual international publication.

His earlier conviction for downloading images of children came when he was held as part of Operation Ore on people using pay-for-view websites in America.

The paedophile pictures were among a sickening library of pornography containing an estimated 30,000 images Yasuhara had carefully compiled over a number of years.

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