CHILDREN'S entertainer David Payne has been jailed for 12 years for a string of sex offences on girls as young as four.

But with good behaviour Payne may serve only half his sentence. The punishment was condemned by the parents of his victims and one mother left the court screaming.

Father-of-two Payne, who advertises his party magic shows in the Swindon Yellow Pages, was found guilty last week of raping a nine-year-old and indecently assaulting two others.

He also admitted 15 similar crimes involving a total of six girls between 1995 and May this year.

Sentencing him yesterday at Swindon Crown Court, Judge John McNaught told him: "You have shown yourself to be a danger to young girls. You have a personality which makes you attractive to young children and allowed their parents to trust you. Tragically you allowed those personality skills to target small girls. It is a disaster for them."

The father of one of the girls, who said his daughter is so angry she stabs pictures of Payne every time they appear in a newspaper, was reduced to tears.

He said: "It is a disgrace. The girls should be grown up and married by the time he comes out. He has abused every trust he ever had. I thought he would go to jail and die in there."

Payne, who lives in Burton near Chippenham, indecently assaulted an eight-year-old girl now 10 while giving her a lift home from a party and assaulted a 10-year-old now 11 while reading her a story.

He was arrested for the rape after another girl, aged nine, told her mother he had attacked her. He had been abusing her from the age of six.

Many of his other victims were assaulted while Payne was babysitting for them.

Jurors were brought to tears by the evidence of three of the girls, especially one victim who, clutching a teddy bear, sobbed as she told how she had begged Payne to stop touching her.

Defending him on Tuesday, Peter Fortune told Judge McNaught Payne was "an outwardly respectable man with a hideous kink in his character."

"I urge the court to accept that this is a man who is most unlikely to offend again and to that end and bearing in mind his remorse, even for a man such as this there must be light at the end of the tunnel."

Payne will be offered treatment while in prison.