THE father of an 11-year-old girl has told of his horror when he discovered his ex-wife was marrying a sex offender.

His daughter was living in the same house as a man convicted of two attempted rapes on women and sex assaults on two 12-year-old girls.

“My world was dropping beneath me,” he said. “My daughter was living in the house of a man with a sexual past.”

Worcester Crown Court was told the father stopped a sleep-over party for his daughter and her friends when he warned one of the parents of the other children about the man’s past.

The father, aged 48, from Worcester, was giving evidence at crown court where he was appealing against a conviction for harassing his ex-wife’s new husband.

But the judge upheld the father’s conviction, saying his actions amounted to “plain acts of harassment”.

The court was told that the father had made 14 phone calls in a single night and in one branded the victim “a self-confessed paedophile, rapist and fraudster”.

In a text message he warned that his ex-wife’s parents might disrupt her wedding to the sex offender.

The court was told that the father’s attitude towards his ex-wife and her husband-to-be was amicable until he discovered the man had a history of sex offences.

He had been found guilty in the 1980s of two separate cases of attempted rape of women and in the 1990s he had also been convicted of sexual assaults on two 12-year-old girls.

Tim Sapwell, prosecuting, said the father sent a text message warning the marriage ceremony might be disrupted.

A year later the father contacted the mother of one of the schoolgirls due to come to the couple’s home for a sleep-over party.

After news of the sex offences got out, all the parents kept their children away – and the party had to be cancelled, upsetting the daughter.

On September 18, 2010 he made the “distressing phone calls” and claimed he was coming round to the couple’s house to see his daughter.

He told the court he found out about the victim’s past after police refused to give him any information.

About the cancelled sleep-over he said: “I felt responsible for these children. The option was to tell the parents or say nothing. A child could have been seriously hurt for life.”

But he admitted his “paedophile” phone message had been borne out of frustration after he had not seen his daughter for a few weeks – and no one was answering his phone calls.

Defence counsel Andrew Davidson said the appellant had had the grace to accept the message was abusive and had only told the truth to a parent.

Judge Toby Hooper QC ruled that the voicemail messages were to “plain acts of harassment” and dismissed the appeal.

He ordered the original sentence of a £1,000 fine and £775 costs – made at Worcester magistrates court by a deputy district judge – to stand and told the appellant to pay an extra £532 costs for the appeal hearing.

The judge made a court order forbidding identification of all the parties involved to protect the daughter.