A paedophile, who kidnapped a four-year-old girl from a Bradford playground and subjected her to prolonged sexual abuse two decades ago, has been brought to justice.

Advances in DNA technology enabled forensic scientists to link 48-year-old Terry McVicar to the crime through a single hair found on the victim’s clothing.

Bradford-born McVicar was jailed for life in 2000 for similar offences against young girls, but did not confess to the Bradford incident at the time.

Yesterday, at Leeds Crown Court, he was sentenced, via a video link from Frankland Prison, Durham, to a concurrent life sentence for the 1990 offences.

The Recorder of Leeds, Judge Peter Collier QC, said there remained a risk of McVicar committing such offences in the future.

He said his behaviour in 1990 had been appalling. It had devastated the lives of the victim and her mother.

Judge Collier added: “The consequences to others of offences like this are especially injurious.”

Prosecutor Jonathan Sharp said that on April 6, 1990, the victim was playing on a swing with other children at a playground in Manningham when McVicar approached and asked if she wanted to “go and get some sweets.” He lifted her off the swing, took her hand and led her away. The girl, thinking he was an uncle, was not alarmed.

McVicar took her to his bedsit in Undercliffe, where the sexual assaults took place. Mr Sharp said: “They were in the flat between one and one and a half hours, and little of that time was not devoted to abuse.”

McVicar took the girl back to the centre of Bradford and left her outside a shop where she was found and later reunited with her mother.

Mr Sharp said the offences took place six days after magistrates gave McVicar, a cannabis abuser at the time, a community service order for indecently assaulting a nine-year-old girl. After that incident he changed his name and moved from Leeds to Bradford.

Mr Sharp said: “The feelings of the victim’s mother during the hours she was missing can easily be imagined, and when re-interviewed during this investigation she could vividly recall her panic.”

McVicar was arrested in January this year and made full and frank admissions.

Mr Sharp said: “His recall of an incident that took place 20 years ago is remarkably fresh and detailed. The victim, by contrast, has never been able to speak of what happened in the bedsit, and, in her view, any subconscious memory she has of the incident has been blocked.”

McVicar, who pleaded guilty in January to one charge of kidnap and two of indecent assault, was jailed for life in December 2000 for three offences of kidnap, two of indecently assaulting females under 14 and attempting to take a child without lawful authority.

The first incident involved a six-year-old girl at a fair. The defendant asked if she would like to go on the rides, took her hand and led her to a rural area where he indecently assaulted her. She was left to make her way home.

Less than a month later he approached two girls playing in their garden and enticed one away by promising sweets and indecently assaulted her. He released her when she screamed and she ran home.

Then he approached a four-year-old girl as he rode his pushbike. He put her on the bike’s crossbar and took her with the intention of indecently assaulting her, but he let her go and cycled off when she began screaming. He also tried to cycle off with a five-year-old girl, but her sister spotted her.

Suzanne Katzing, mitigating, said McVicar’s understanding of what he had put the children through was growing and the risk of him re-offending was decreasing.

McVicar unsuccessfully applied for parole at the end of last year.

Judge Collier said the only sentence he could pass was a concurrent life sentence, with a tariff of one year in the unusual circumstances.

The judge said: “You won’t be able to make an application for parole until 12 months from today. It remains a question for the Parole Board as to whether you will ever be released and, if so, when.”