The mother of a child raped and abused by paedophile Kevin Hazelwood for more than three years has spoken of her daughter's horrifying ordeal.

Hazelwood, 40, of Oriental Place, Brighton, was jailed indefinitely on Friday for his "systematic" abuse of the girl, now nine, sexually assaulting another child in the Eighties and downloading child pornography from the internet.

At the time, he was on the sex offenders' register and under supervision from probation officers after he was found in possession of sickening images of sexual abuse against children.

He even confessed to probation officers that he had abused a child some 25 years before but his admission was never acted on, leaving him to continue raping the daughter of a woman he had befriended in 2001.

The victim"s mother, a 25-year-old university student, from Brighton, told a national newspaper she knew nothing of his past.

She said: "Had we been told we would not have allowed him anywhere near our daughter.

"My daughter keeps asking if he is coming to get her, even now he is in prison. That is the terror she has been left in. We have been failed by the system."

The girl finally told her mother when they were having a conversation about bullying.

She told the newspaper: "Hearing this man who I thought I knew admitting, 'Yes, I raped your daughter' was devastating. I physically felt someone's hands going into my body ripping my guts out."

Judge Richard Hayward ordered Hazelwood to serve a minimum five years and seven months. Attorney General Lord Goldsmith is to decide whether the term was too lenient.