A pervert who molested two nine-year-old girls was jailed for two years yesterday, leaving one family furious over the short sentence.

Howard Soares, 60, was jailed by Magistrate William Francis yesterday for ?one of the worst cases of sexual exploitation? he said he had seen. But in giving Soares less than half the maximum sentence, the family of one of the girls and the Coalition for the Protection of Children feel they have been let down by Mr. Francis and the justice system.

?I was afraid that the judge would not be strong enough,? said the father of one of the girls, who is now 11. ?The expectation of the Crown was based on history and not on the seriousness of the offence.

?This was one step away from rape and the punishment should have been one step away from the maximum, not less than half. I am also concerned that there was a lack of rehabilitation in the sentence. Two years is not enough time.?

Soares, who lives on a yacht at Mangrove Bay, was a close friend of one of the families and would often stay with them. The court was told that on May 18, 2002, a neighbour?s nine-year-old child went around to visit her friend and Soares answered the door.

The family were out but Soares persuaded the girl to come to a garden to show her some new-born animals, Crown counsel Juan Wolffe told the court. He asked her to sit on her knee and began rubbing her stomach, before placing his hand on her pants over her vagina.

He than put his hand down the front of her underpants and inserted part of his finger into her vagina and also put his hand down the back of her underwear and touched her buttocks.

The court heard that he then put her hand on his erect penis before grabbing her wrist tightly and making her rub his penis up and down until he ejaculated.

The girl went home and told her parents who contacted the Police. In a separate incident in July or August of 2001, Soares took a different nine-year-old, the daughter of the family with whom he stayed regularly, to the garden where he put his hands down her pants and rubbed her vagina.

Soares pleaded guilty to the two counts of sexual exploitation at an earlier hearing.

Mr. Wolffe read out moving Victim Impact Statements from both girls and both sets of parents and called for a lengthy jail term for Soares, a single man and a painter by trade.

?I have not been acting or feeling myself,? read the statement from the nine-year-old victim of the more serious attack.

?I haven?t slept well for a long time and I have been scared to go outside the house. I have been trying to forget the whole thing and put it behind me.

?Ever since the incident I have not been thinking or concentrating properly.?

In a statement from her mother, the court was told that the girl?s school grades had suffered since the incident. A statement from the father described the turmoil the family had been through and his fear for his daughter?s future.

Mr. Wolffe also read out statements from the other family, including a statement from the father who said that Soares ?had been like a brother to me?.

?I trusted Mr. Soares and he has taken advantage of this trust,? the court heard. ?He has betrayed me and my family in the worst possible way.?

In calling for a prison sentence, Mr. Wolffe told the court: ?The effects of this permeate far beyond this room. It is not something that these girls can easily forget. Not only have they been affected but the families have been affected ? affected in the most profound mental and physical way.

?These girls have been seriously affected by what has taken place and they cannot trust others ? that is something that is profoundly sad, that a child?s innocence has been taken.?

He added that Soares had not taken full responsibility for what he had done, instead actually blaming the girls.

He then read from a social inquiry report in which Soares said: ? I was enticed by the girls. I don?t go round looking for girls, they do things to turn me on?.

In mitigation, defence counsel Mark Pettingill said: ?These are difficult matters to deal with, especially for those with young children. Great weight has to be given to that despite the allegations neither Mr. Soares, nor I, was prepared to subject those girls to any form of interrogation about what had transpired.

?This is a 60-year-old man with no record. He hasn?t been out being a predator or a paedophile. He describes himself as a broken man. He has suffered through all of this.?

Mr. Francis sentenced Soares to two years for each offence to run concurrently.

Sheelagh Cooper president of the Coalition for the Protection of Children, told after sentence was passed: ?This is a very sick man who has caused irreparable damage to two young girls.

?Two years is not enough time to get the therapy he needs and so he will remain an extreme risk to the community.?