A MOTHER told a jury that her daughter’s behaviour “changed overnight” after she was allegedly raped when aged 11 years old.   

Kevin Offland, 45, of Nichols Road in Great Yarmouth, is on trial at Swansea Crown Court facing eighteen charges relating to alleged sexual offences over a 24-year period.

The offences are alleged to have taken place in the Pembrokeshire and Shrewsbury areas.

The defendant is charged with three offences of rape, rape of a child, causing a child to engage in sexual activity, and 13 offences of sexual activity with a child.

He denies all charges.

The mother of one of the complainants told the jury on Wednesday that her daughter had told her of the allegations in December 2018.

“She told me that Kevin Offland had raped her when she was 11 years old,” she said.

“She was crying, like she didn’t want to tell me.”

She described her daughter as being “happy” and “really calm” before the alleged incident, but that she “changed dramatically” afterwards.

“She changed overnight,” the witness said. “I just thought it was becoming a teenager. She’d be kicking off. She had never been like that.”

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Nicola Powell, defending, asked the witness why she told the police in her initial statement in December 2018 that her daughter “may have said [Offland] either touched or raped her”, but in a statement in April 2019 said that her daughter “was raped by him”.

“She told me she had been raped by Kevin Offland,” the witness replied.

The jury were played the interview conducted by the police of the complainant who Offland is charged with raping when she was 11 years old.

Ms Powell asked the complainant why she did not come forward with the allegations earlier.

“Because I was scared,” the complainant said. “I was just a little kid. Who would have believed me over this man?”

Ms Powell asked her if she had discussed the defendant with another one of the complainants.

“There were quite a few people out to get Kevin Offland,” the defence barrister said.

“Not out to get Kevin Offland,” the complainant said. “Just to get justice for what he had put us through.”

The court heard that Offland moved to Wales in around 2011.

It is alleged that a then-19-year-old Offland raped the first complainant – who was 18 at the time – in February 1998. He was also accused of raping a second complainant on one occasion between December 2000 and December 2003, and the 11-year-old girl on one occasion between 2008 and 2009.

Offland was alleged to have raped the fourth complainant in Pembrokeshire in October 2014.

He is accused of making a 14-year-old girl carry out a sex act on him in Milford Haven and sexually abusing her multiple times between 2016 and 2018. He is also alleged to have sexually abused a second girl – also aged 14 and 15 – multiple times in Pembrokeshire between 2020 and 2022.

The trial continues.