A sex predator who threatened his child victims with writing a letter to their father was jailed for eight years yesterday.
George Ritchie, formerly of Glenrothes, conducted a campaign of abuse against three young girls and tried to rape one child when she was aged seven.
Ritchie, 56, showed victims an envelope and told them it contained a letter he had written to their father and warned that if they did not do as he asked he would pass it on.
Lord Boyd of Duncansby told the child molester at the High Court in Edinburgh: “You threatened your victims that you would tell their father that they had misbehaved.
“Between 1977 and 1982 you sexually abused three young females. The youngest was six when you started and the eldest 12 when the abuse came to an end.”
The judge said it was clear that the offences involved “significant planning” by Ritchie.
Lord Boyd told Ritchie that he would have jailed him for 11 years for the sex crimes if he had been convicted following a trial.
The judge said that the offences he was dealing with were more than 30 years old, but said they remained serious.
Ritchie, of no fixed abode, earlier admitted three indecency offences against the girls and attempting to rape one of them.
All the child victims were threatened that he would tell on them if they did not comply with his instructions.
Ritchie committed the sex crimes in Glenrothes, Burntisland and Dunfermline.
He was jailed in 1999 for nine months after he was convicted of indecent assault on a 15-year-old boy at Dunfermline Sheriff Court.
The court heard that his earlier offending came under investigation after one of his victims went to Dunfermline police station in March this year and reported that she had been the victim of historical sexual abuse at his hands.
Ritchie molested one girl and carried out sex acts on her and told her: “If you smile I know you like it.”
Another terrified child was left crying uncontrollably after she was abused and recalled being so frightened that she started to wet the bed and told herself that as long as she cried Ritchie would leave her alone.
Ritchie told one victim that if she revealed the abuse he would tell her father that she had been smoking.
Defence solicitor advocate Gordon Martin said that since Ritchie’s release from the earlier jail term he had not re-offended.
He added that Ritchie was “not a fool” and appreciated he would be jailed again for the sex offences against the girls.
Ritchie was also placed on the sex offenders register.