The former Boys’ Grammar School, Brock Road Youth Centre, where paedophile Eugene Hughes used to run his judo school. (0636554)

A YOUNG mother has told of how her physical abuse by a paedophile tore her family apart. Her complaint against Eugene Hughes was the first in a sequence that culminated in him being locked up for six-and-a-half years.

‘I was determined that if it stopped one person from going through what I have, it would be worthwhile,’ she said. ‘The Royal Court made no allowance for his age, which is only right, as he made no allowance for mine.’

Hughes was found guilty of two counts of indecently assaulting the woman, now 24, at Brock Road Youth Centre when she was aged between seven and 12. The woman and her family moved to Guernsey in 1987, when she was five. From 1989, she and her brother attended the Hugh Francis School of Judo, which Hughes ran.

When Hughes began assaulting the woman, she pleaded with her mother to let her stop going to judo but she could not bring herself to say why. Her mother insisted her daughter went as she worked on Saturday afternoons and said there was no one else to look after her.

‘Mum feels so bad about it now,’ said the woman. ‘At the time, I blamed her for it. I couldn’t bring myself to explain what had happened and she couldn’t understand why I hated her.’