A RAPIST phoned police and confessed to molesting a primary school girl when he was in his early teens.

Liam Jones, 24, also admitted using a lighter and deodorant can to set fire to a barn in 2015. Hay worth £7,000 was destroyed in the blaze and the barn had to be rebuilt.

The south Wiltshire man was jailed for five years yesterday when he appeared before Swindon Crown Court via video link from HMP Bullingdon.

Prosecutor Rob Welling said Jones called Wiltshire Police’s non-emergency 101 number in June 2018. “It seems he’d hit a very low point and wanted to confess things that had been weighing on his mind.”

In particular, he wanted to tell detectives about a series of sexual assaults on a girl five years his junior that had taken place between around 2008 and 2010 at her home near Westbury.

The assaults began when the girl was around seven or eight.

“When she first resisted this he went and got a biology book, showed her some pictures and said this is right and pressured her to carry on doing what it was he wanted to do,” said Mr Welling.

Jones had raped the girl on at least three occasions, including in the bathroom at his family home.

He threatened the girl, warned her not to tell her parents and referred to her by derogatory names.

The court heard he had once come into the girl’s bedroom with a knife and had scared her.

The girl had been encouraged to go to the police by a counselling service in 2016 but had not reported the abuse. It only came to light when the man himself approached the police two years later.

Jones, of no fixed address, admitted two counts of rape, sexual touching and arson.

The final charge related to a fire at a barn near Upton Scudamore in July 2015. Egged on by friends, he used a lighter and a deodorant spray can to set fire to hay, destroying the barn and resulting in a £19,000 demolition bill for the MOD, which owned the barn.

Richard Onslow, defending, said his client had had a difficult childhood and suffered from poor mental health. The fact he approached the police himself was highly unusual. He was remorseful.

“He is a young man who has been wracked with guilt and he will in the fullness of time be released. It is unusual if not unheard of for a man to ring the police to confess serious crimes such as these that were committed while an adolescent or a young man,” Mr Onslow said.