Long-lost father jailed for having sex with daughter who tracked him down over internetAndrew Butler, 47, jailed for 10 months
Nicola Yates, 25, given suspended prison sentence
Second time pair had been charged with incest
By Daily Mail Reporter
5th August 2011
A father who had a four-year sexual relationship with his daughter after she traced him through the internet has been jailed for 10 months.
Andrew Butler, 47, was tracked down by 25-year-old daughter Nicola Yates through the family tracing website Genes Reunited.
She was sentenced to 26 weeks imprisonment suspended for two years - in what was the second time the pair had been charged with incest.
Birmingham Crown Court heard how the pair, who had not seen each other since 1992, discovered two decades later they had been living just streets apart in the city.
When they met again for the first time, Yates, who was 20 at the time, enjoyed a 'highly charged, emotional reunion' with her father.
Relatives were later horrified to discover the young woman and Butler had become illicit lovers.
The daughter and father were arrested in September last year after her family alerted police.
Yates, from Castle Vale, Birmingham, and Butler, from Yardley, Birmingham, both admitted having sex with an adult relative.
Incredibly, the couple had admitted the same charge four years ago and were both punished for the offence - but reignited their affair for a second time afterwards.
On the first occasion, Yates was given a community order for 18 months and Butler received four months jail.
But in 2008 the pair started up their affair again, to the horror of relatives who thought Yates had put her incestuous relationship behind her.
Her family's worst nightmare returned when Yates announced she had a 'new boyfriend' but was reluctant to introduce him to her family.
Around the same time fun-loving Yates updated her social networking sites, revealing a string of intimate facts about herself including that her favourite pastime was 'sex, sex, and more sex'.
When Yates's sister Natalie, now 19, discovered sexual phone pictures of the pair, she showed them to their mother, who is said to have exclaimed in horror: 'That's my ex-husband!'
Sentencing the pair at Birmingham Crown Court, Judge James Burbidge QC said: 'I accept from everything that I have read about you both that you appear to have a relationship with genuine affection but it was an illicit relationship.
'It is a relationship regarded as abhorrent by society in general for understandable reasons.'
He said Butler was a manipulative individual and accepted that Yates was immature and vulnerable.
Aggravating features included the harm it had done to the families involved, and that they had had a child which was aborted.
Yates's mother and Butler had married in 1985 but had divorced in 1992 and after that Butler had no contact with Yates.
When officers went to Butler's house they found a phone containing text messages between them which was 'evidence of a sexual relationship which had taken place'.
Police also recovered a laptop with sexually explicit pictures of them both as well as cards and a love letter.
Rob Cowley, defending Butler, said: 'This was not a relationship that involved any element of coercion, manipulation or abuse of position of authority.
'It was a sexual relationship enthusiastically participated in by both parties.'
Liz De'Oliveira, defending Yates, added: 'It was a very close and loving relationship but at some point it has overstepped the boundary and has become a sexual relationship.'
Incest remains one of society's last taboos and is an unthinkable concept to most people.
Yet research by the British Medical Journal showed that half of those separated from relatives at a young age experience strong sexual feelings when they are reunited.
Psychiatrists believe the natural repulsion brothers and sisters feel for one another as children acts as an inhibitor to committing incest.
But those who miss out on this time can develop powerful, obsessive feelings for their sibling in adulthood.
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