A HEARTBROKEN mother has spoken out about her devastation after finding out her little girl was filmed by a paedophile while changing.

Christopher Byrne, 56, was jailed for more than six years after admitting a string of abuse charges.

These included four counts of sexual assault of a child under 13, and five of making indecent images of children changing after playing in a paddling pool.

The offences took place in Basildon.

One of the victims’ mothers told the Echo: “My daughter would have been seven or eight-years-old and he hid a camera while girls got changed from being in a paddling pool.

“I feel overall his sentence is too lenient and there needs to be longer sentences so that these animals know they wont get away with it.

“There were things that I knew when police found him, but then around five weeks ago I was told more things that were much more upsetting.

“She’s doing fine now, at the time there were occasions that she would behave strangely.

“When I would take her up to bed she would shout ‘don’t touch me’ which I never understood.

“When the police interviewed her, and I talked to her, she said she was okay, but it was her body that showed me she was keeping things.

“She would look away, curl up, they said the way she was acting meant she wasn’t telling us everything that happened.

“I’m just worried that when she’s older, she’ll get flashbacks, like if she gets a boyfriend a horrible memory will come up and she’ll go into shock.

"I don’t think the sentence is long enough, at the least I think he should serve the full tern, not half of it. I don’t want him to have a nice life after he comes out.”

Byrne, of Castle Walk Pitsea, was jailed for six years and four months during sentencing at Basildon Crown Court on Friday. The offences date back more than three years.