Ex-girlfriend of Soham killer Ian Huntley fears she could have prevented girls’ deaths if she had ‘fought harder’

THE former partner of Soham killer Ian Huntley has revealed how there were "so many missed opportunities", that could have stopped him before he eventually killed two schoolgirls.

Katie Bryan said she still feels guilty when she thinks that if she had gone to the police, after her abusive relationship with him 18 years ago ended, he may not have been able to go on to kill.

Huntley committed one of the most notorious crimes in British history, for which he is serving two life sentences.

The school caretaker abducted ten-year-old friends Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman in 2002 and was later convicted of their murders.

She told the Mail on Sunday she was 15 when she met Huntley and after he groomed her, she was soon subjected to beatings and was raped by him until she became pregnant and managed to leave him.

She said: "I was powerless under his spell, completely dominated by him.

";I was too young to understand he was controlling me and squashing every ounce of self-esteem I possessed. I was too young to know. But it doesn’t stop me thinking now that had I fought back harder, had I gone to police, perhaps his paedophilia, his violence, would have been uncovered sooner.

"That he would never have been able to walk into a job in a school where he could work with young children and ultimately kill those two beautiful little girls."

After he had convinced her to move in with him, Katie's mother, desperate to break Katie free from the relationship, asked the pair to move in to a caravan in her back garden.

There Katie saw that Huntley had an interest in young girls as they would be visited by a younger family friend - about primary school age - and she was one of the few people Huntley liked having around.

She revealed that he would punish her for making mistakes - when she burnt his food he made he go on her hands and knees and eat cat food, and on one occasion she shoved a cucumber down his throat to try and choke her.

When she tried to leave him he held a knife up and threatened he would kill himself.

Katie told the paper: "Looking back, the way he acted wasn’t right.

"He was flirty. I just didn’t see it at the time. Then one day she stopped coming. I asked friends but no one would tell me anything.

"After we split up, Mum told me the girl’s parents had told her that Ian had made her climb a tree and indecently assaulted her. I couldn’t believe it.

"Much later the police did come to see me to ask me if I knew anything that had happened at that time, but I honestly never knew.

"There were so many missed opportunities with Huntley.

"It haunts me that he never got stopped. I think about the what-ifs – if they had investigated him more when my mum got the police involved and when the parents of the primary school girl reported him to the police.

"If they’d pushed that little bit further and looked into it that little bit further things might have been different. There were other victims of rapes and assaults too and he got away with them all."

Katie's 18-year-old daughter, Samantha, found out her father is Huntley during a recent school project on murders - something which had been a closely guarded secret.

She was raised by a different man, with whom Katie has had three more children and says of them "my children have got me through this".

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