'My dad tried to sexually assault me': Daughter of child rapist speaks out (From Sutton Guardian)

My dad tried to sexually assault me': Daughter of Cheam rapist Bill Lambert speaks out

9:37am Thursday 19th May 2011 in Lambert Trial By Jamie Henderson

The estranged daughter of child rapist Bill Lambert has revealed how he tried to sexually assault her after she tracked him down after 15 years apart.

Karen Kennedy, 51, who has bravely waived her right to anonymity as a victim of a sexual offence, was separated from her father at the age of one.

But when she tracked him down when she was 16 he tried to sexually abuse her before kicking her out on to the streets.

Her shocking tale comes after her father now faces death in jail after being found guilty last week of raping and sexually assaulting young girls in a churchyard.

William Lambert, 74, preyed on four vulnerable girls, aged 11 to 15, after he lured them to an informal youth club he ran at St Dunstan’s Church, Cheam, more than 20 years ago.

Mrs Kennedy was born in 1960, but within a year her parents were divorced, and Lambert went on to father six children from four different women.

She spent the majority of her youth, from two to 16, in and out of care homes where, she claimed, she was sexually abused, before eventually trying to track down her father.

She said: “It was 1976 and I knew he was in Cheam and remembered number 19, Farnham Court.

“I knocked on the door and I said to the man who answered ‘My name is Karen and I’m looking for my dad, Bill’.

“He flung his arms around me and invited me back, but that soon changed as he complained that I looked too much like my mother.

“Within days he had tried to sexually assault me but because I wasn’t up for it he kicked me out on to the streets.

“I was only 16 and had gone to my father for sanctuary.

“And because I rejected him, he didn’t want to know me anymore.

"That was 35 years ago and, just from looking at the photo of him, I feel he is still that arrogant and ultimately untouchable man.”

She informed the police of her alleged abuse but Lambert denied she was his daughter, so she organised a DNA test with his other children – which proved she was.

She said: “The police asked if I wanted to pursue the allegations I made, but to be honest I didn’t want to muddy the waters for the trial.”

She said she would still not pursue a conviction against her father now he has been found guilty of other child sex crimes.

Lambert tricked four girls aged between 11 and 15 in to havinig sex with him in sick occult ceremonies by claiming he was a warlock who could pass on his magic powers through intercourse.

But at Croydon Crown Court last week a jury saw through his web of lies, finding him guilty of a string of sordid sexual attacks.

He will be sentenced on June 10.

The Sutton Guardian can also exclusively reveal he was cleared of 16 strikingly similar sex charges against children at the same youth club in 1994 after an Old Bailey trial.

The pervert slipped through the net when a jury cleared him of raping the young girls at the same church, when vicar Timothy Surtees spoke out in his defence.

He already had a 1968 conviction for making a 14-year-old girl perform a sex act on him.