A BLAENAVON man was jailed for 16 years and eight months for almost 40 counts of rape and sexual assault against five young girls.

Alan Jenkins, 56, was sentenced at Newport Crown court. The offences spanned almost a decade.

Jenkins, of Hillside Avenue, had earlier pleaded not guilty to all charges.

He was also disqualified from working with children and ordered to sign on the sex offenders register for life.

There were five victims in total who were attacked between May 1995 and June 2007.

After the hearing, a mother of one of the victims, who cannot be named, said she had no idea what was happening until her daughter told her in 2003 that the man had done things he shouldn't have been doing.

"He's a clever bloke because there was nothing you could see, there was nothing out of place," said the mother.

The girl's mum said she was devastated when she found out and almost suffered a nervous breakdown, as well as battling with severe depression ever since.

The mother said the case was a nightmare for the whole family: "Every time we plucked up the courage to go to court, it got adjourned, it's been a nightmare. When the case came, it was frightening, but we all got through it."

She described the sentence as a "relief," adding: "I knew he couldn't hurt any other children, I lost my girl for quite a while, but now everything is getting back to normal.

"It was like a depression hanging over my head has left, now I can breathe again. My daughter is getting her life back on track. She just wants to live and look forward to life and not look back. It's going to be a long road but we've got to get there."