A YOUNG mother whose home was set fire to by her violent ex-boyfriend has spoken of her ordeal.

Richard Rowe, 31, set fire to Jemima Jones’s house while she, her three-year-old daughter and four-month-old son were sleeping inside.

Terrified Jemima, 23, woke to the sound of her smoke alarm going off.

Thick smoke was filling the property.

Jemima had to dangle her baby, Swaily, out of an upstairs window and into the arms of rescuers.

Jemima, from Horsham, said: “I leaned out the window holding my baby out of it because I knew the smoke would fill his lungs in no time at all.

“My neighbours held out a duvet so I could drop him into it, but then someone else brought a ladder and rescued us both before the fire brigade arrived.

“I owe my life to them.

“He has destroyed everything and everyone.

“I was made homeless as it wasn’t habitable.

“My four-year-old daughter was too scared to go back.

“I have had to rehome my dogs.

“I have no friends or family in the area I have moved to and he has deprived my children of their grandparents.

“My son has been left without a dad.

“How do I tell him that his own father tried to kill us?”

Rowe poured petrol beneath the window where Jemima’s daughter Roxy was asleep, and doused a dog kennel with fuel before setting it alight at 2.30am, on July 8, 2016.

Jemima awoke to the sound of smoke alarms screeching and her five dogs barking – and ran to check on her baby.

Terrified Jemima woke her friend who was staying at the house.

He scooped up Roxy and ran with her down the stairs and past the inferno in the front room, and out of the back door while she rang 999.

Rowe was jailed at Hove Crown Court last week for three and a half years.