A MOTHER has slammed the "lenient" sentence given to a man who indecently assaulted her daughter when she was five.

Darrell Glasgow, 39, who admitted kissing the girl intimately, walked free from court after a judge said jail would destroy him.

The supermarket worker, of Tremellan Street, Accrington, was said to be vulnerable and intellectually challenged.

He was given a two year community rehabilitation order and was placed on the Sex Offenders' Register for five years.

Sentencing Glasgow, Judge Brian Carter QC said he would have been justified in putting him behind bars, but that it would destroy him and he would not receive the necessary specialist help he needed.

But today the victim's mum said her daughter, now 12, thought the decision was "ridiculous".

She said: "The whole court system has let us down badly.

"There has been no justice done here. He has got away with it and she has just been forgotten.

"Everything that judge said was all sympathy for him, about how he wouldn't be able cope in prison, like he's the victim and not her.

"But he's destroyed her life. She was a bubbly, happy, healthy child, until he came along. Her health was badly affected and her behaviour became very difficult."

She added: "What made it worse was that he smirked as he left the dock, like he knew he had got away with it. But she has got to live with this for the rest of her life." The mum-of-three said her daughter kept quiet about what had happened for five years.

She said: "We were out shopping just before Christmas, we saw him and she just blurted it out. We went straight to the police.

"After she had spoken to the police, she came out and told me she had been very brave and hadn't cried.

"She still doesn't want to talk about it with us and is keeping a lot of things inside.

"But after she told us a lot of things began to make sense, like the change in her behaviour.

"We had just thought she was being a bit of a handful and would grow out of it, but it was because of what he did to her."