'Mr Respectable' paedophile: 'How could I spend 23 years with him and not have known?' asks his ex-wife

University worker Christine Barron, 53, had two sons and a daughter with the paedophile before the pair divorced ten years ago after 23 years of marriage.

She said. "It's just been a dreadful ordeal for all of us.

"Fortunately he hasn't, as far as I know, touched my children and if he had I would slit his throat.

"I wouldn't even bat an eyelid. That's the way I feel. He just disgusts me. I just find it all dreadful.

"How could I marry somebody like that?"

She added: "I've had to move house. I have been accosted in the street when I was out one night by one of the parents involved.

"I suppose she thought that I should know about this and it's come as a total shock to me.

"My daughter has also had to move house. I think the children are just so thoroughly ashamed.

"My daughter, I don't know, maybe she's in denial. She's philosophical about it, I suppose.

"My eldest lad doesn't want to know his father at all and my youngest son has a very adult view. If his father has done this, his father is sick and he has got to forgive him.

"I'm proud of him for handling it so well, but I'm worried about the effect on his schooling.

"It's going to go on affecting their lives because it's something you don't get over. You learn to live with it.

"I'm finding it terribly difficult to equate it with the man I knew. He loved children and children loved him.

"He wasn't that kind of man as far as I knew. My family are shocked, I'm shocked."

Mrs Barron said that she once quizzed her husband about why he always invited young girls to play with their son.

"He said to me, 'Little boys are boisterous and they jump all over the furniture'. I just sort of accepted it - it was plausible wasn't it?

"I suppose I feel guilty to a degree. I should have seen some signs.

"Even as my son got older he was looking after other people's children because I suppose they thought he was a reasonable person.

"He would give to charities. He always gave to Children in Need every year.

"I don't even want to give him the time of day. Yet this man is the father of my children. It's something that will be with them for the rest of their lives.

"He has betrayed all of us. He has let my children down. Their father should be someone they can be proud of, not ashamed of.

"It's not their fault and yet they are victims."

The mother of one of the little girls abused by Barron said she had been left wrestling with feelings of guilt "because I felt I hadn't protected my own children".

She said: "Barron came across as really nice, genuine, charming. A really nice person is the only way to put it.

"He appeared caring and interested in how the children were doing, in some ways my welfare as well, after my husband and I separated.

"He just seemed really genuine and nice. I was absolutely furious with him, then felt guilty with myself because I felt I hadn't protected my own children."