Two women have seen a former Royal Marine jailed for sickening assaults on them as children.
May 24, 2015 ·
Last year Stephen Salmon, who worked on the Royal Yacht Britannia, was jailed for four years for the sexual abuse of a girl aged between nine and 12 in the 1970s.
The News report of the case was seen by two women on the Isle of Wight who had also suffered at the hands of Salmon, a family friend, when they were six and nine. It prompted them to go to the police.
He was yesterday given a further six months, for each offence of indecent assault on a child under 14. Both victims are now in their 40s and have children of their own.
The first victim, who was nine at the time, said: ‘My friend saw his (Salmon’s) picture in The News when she was in Portsmouth for the day and told me.
‘I felt like everything had been blown out into the open. I knew what had happened but, until then, I felt a sense of distance from it. Then all of a sudden it became real again.
‘It was a chance to do something about it because he had been proved a paedophile. I had nothing to lose.’
Salmon admitted the attacks but claimed he was depressed and drinking heavily at the time and could not remember them.
The second victim, who was six at the time, said she felt the sentence was lenient but understood the judge’s hands were tied.
She added: ‘Occasionally I would think about it.
‘Things would happen and it would come to the forefront but I would bury it away again. It was never dealt with. I never received counselling.
‘I was able to bury it right back until I saw him one day, three years later, and it made me feel sick and disgusted.
‘It happened again when I saw him in the paper. It was a picture of him 30 years ago, just how I remembered him.
‘All those feelings came back. I could not allow those feelings back for nothing. I had to act on them.’
Salmon lived in Portsmouth, the Isle of Wight, then Spain.
