Man who fathered three children with his own daughter during 16-year relationship jailed for Four years.

A man has been jailed for almost four years after a court heard he fathered three children with his own daughter.

The 57-year-old father, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was jailed for 46 months after Crown Court heard of the 16-year relationship.

The court heard that police had caught the father in 2005 but had let him off with just a caution, despite his daughter already having given birth to one son and being pregnant with another.

Patrick Palmer, prosecuting, said the girl believed another man to be her father until she was a teenager, having not seen her real dad since she was a toddler.

After discovering the truth she then started to get to know her real father and eventually moved in with him after a problem at home with her stepfather.

She later told police she was 14 when her father first kissed her and touched her sexually. The pair began to have sex regularly and their first son was born in 2002.

Her father was arrested in 2005 and cautioned by police for incest after he admitted being the father of that boy, although no sexual complaint was made at that time by his daughter.

• The decades of missed clues around pedophile teacher who molested children around the world for 40 years

Mr Palmer told the court the father was put on the sexual offences register for two years.

Jailing the father, who admitted 10 charges of incest, one of indecent assault and one of gross indecency, Judge said the police were unaware at that time that the defendant’s daughter was actually pregnant again with his second child who was born later that year.

He said: 'At some point in the ensuing months you signed an agreement with Social Services you would not see each other and yet continued to do so.'

The court heard that although the frequency of their sexual contact reduced their third child was born in 2010.

The judge told him: 'By this time she describes you as a controlling and jealous man.

'Life was clearly unpleasant for her so much so that in 2012 she went to the police.'

Stephen Welford, mitigating for the father, said his client accepted his daughter was vulnerable when she had sought him out, but because of their previous lack of contact they did not have the usual parental bonding which perhaps contributed to what happened.