11 July 2012 Last updated at 07:18 ET

Mark Dunbar jailed for raping young girl and mother

A man who was convicted of repeatedly raping a young girl and her mother has been jailed for nine years.

Mark Dunbar, from East Kilbride, raped the girl, who contracted a sexually transmitted disease, between the ages of seven and 11 from 2005 and 2009.

He also raped her 32-year-old mother on various occasions between September 2009 and January 2010.

Dunbar, 29, was caught when the girl reported him after watching an episode of Eastenders about child sex abuse.

During his trial at the High Court in Glasgow, Dunbar claimed his victims, who cannot be named for legal reasons, had made up the accusations.

Weekly abuse

The girl, who is now 14, told the jury that Dunbar began touching her when she was six and began to rape her when she was around seven or eight years old.

She told the court: "He started touching me and that on my private parts after wrestling with me. And then it got worse. He ended up sleeping with me. He had sex with me."

The girl said that the abuse occurred a few times a week and that she did not want it to happen but was scared of Dunbar.

The jury heard that a doctor had examined the girl in 2010 and found that she had had a sexually transmitted disease.

In court, her 32-year-old mother broke down as she relived the moment her daughter told her she was being raped by Dunbar.

The woman said: "She says the same thing is happening to me as what's happening to the girl in Eastenders."

The court was told her daughter said: "Mark Dunbar is making me have sex with him."

Her mother told the jury: "I couldn't take it in, it was such a shock."

The woman also told the jury that Dunbar raped her even after she begged him to stop.

Lying claim

In evidence, Dunbar claimed that sex with the mother was consensual and said the girl was lying and he had never touched her.

But the jury did not believe him and convicted him of two counts of rape.

Jailing Dunbar at the High Court in Edinburgh, temporary judge John Morris QC told him: "You have been convicted of committing terrible crimes.

"A custodial sentence is the only appropriate disposal available to me."

The judge ordered Dunbar to be supervised for three years following his release from prison and told him he would spend the rest of his life on the sex offenders' register.