A WIDOWER has been given a suspended prison sentence for sexual attacks on a mother and her 14-year-old daughter which took place in the last months of his second wife’s life.

Nick Adington, prosecuting, said Peter Hepple, 75, assaulted the younger victim when he called at her house with some leaflets for the older woman.

He had previously lent the older woman some money and had also sexually assaulted her.

Hepple, of Avon Drive, Huntington, pleaded guilty to two charges of sexual assault.

His barrister Andrew Semple said: “These offences are very much out of character and driven by particular factors in his life at the time.”

They were committed when it was clear that Hepple’s wife of many years had been dying and he had been her full-time carer.

He was ashamed of his actions.

Recorder Simon Myerson QC told him that despite the circumstances: “There is just no excuse for it, any sort of sexual assault is extremely serious.

“It is not simply a question of physical harm and shock.”

He gave Hepple a 13-month prison sentence, suspended for two years on condition that he goes on a sex offender treatment programme and undergoes probation service supervision.

He also made a sexual offences prevention order banning him from contacting the two victims in any way.

The order bans him from having unsupervised contact with any girl under 16 years old for five years.

In addition, Hepple was put on the sex offenders’ register for ten years.