'I'm a paedophile': Huntley finally confesses

The Soham killer's admission follows a quest for justice by one of his first victims - Hailey Giblin - who says she was abused five years before he murdered Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman.

Mrs Giblin, now 21, took out a civil claim for damages against Huntley after police refused to charge him. Her aim was to get a judge to formally declare that Huntley had attacked her.

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Now she has insisted that if police had believed her at the time, the Soham murders may never have happened.

Mrs Giblin said: "Had Humberside Police taken my allegations seriously when I first made them, Huntley would have been placed on the Sex Offenders Register and would not have been able to get a job as a school caretaker in Soham. Holly and Jessica may still be alive.

"Instead, the police did not believe my story. I was treated like a perpetrator, not as a victim, and Huntley was not charged."

Initially Huntley, 33, contested the civil action insisting he had not attacked Mrs Giblin in an orchard in the Cleethorpes area in 1997. The case - which has cost Mrs Giblin about £60,000 in legal fees - had been due to be heard in the High Court later this year.

But the Daily Mail can reveal that, faced with overwhelming evidence, Huntley has now admitted he did sexually abuse Mrs Giblin.

He has signed a legal document last month at Wakefield prison in West Yorkshire, where Huntley is serving a double life sentence for the murders of tenyear- olds Holly and Jessica in Soham in the summer of 2002.

Huntley has always claimed that he has no sexual interest in children. In his various accounts of what happened when he killed Holly and Jessica in August 2002, he has consistently maintained that he did not abuse the girls.

Last night Mrs Giblin, a mother-of-one of Barton-upon-Humber, Lincolnshire, urged police to charge the former school caretaker.

"If it adds another 24 hours to his prison sentence, it would be worth it for me," she said.

"I feel elated that he has finally admitted it but upset and frus trated that it has taken two failed police investigations, the deaths of two little girls and many ruined lives to get this outcome."

Mrs Giblin, who has waived her right to anonymity, says she does not expect to receive any compensation as a result of her legal victory.

She added: "That was never my main motivation.

"I brought this action as a matter of principle. To have now got this admission is absolutely priceless to me.

"He has admitted he assaulted me and effectively that he is a paedophile, something he has always been reluctant to do.

"When I last spoke to Humberside Police, they said they could only reinvestigate my case if there was new evidence. Now they have it...an admission of guilt from Huntley himself."

Mrs Giblin says it was in September 1997 that Huntley, then 23, repeatedly sexually assaulted her. He threatened to kill her if she told anyone but within months she reported him to police.

Huntley was questioned but never charged with assaulting Mrs Giblin, then Hailey Edwards. He denied the offence.

After his 2003 conviction for the Soham murders, police reopened the case. But in 2005 the Crown Prosecution Service decided not to proceed due to a "lack of evidence".

In the past Humberside Police has said the evidence against Huntley was limited to Mrs Giblin's taped statement when she was an 11-year- old and was 'insufficient' for a prosecution.