A perverted social worker employed by Tower Hamlets Council who molested a 10-year-old girl and her vulnerable mother has been jailed for eight years.

Soifar Rahman carried out the “gross and blatant” abuse of trust during a visit to the pair’s home in 1997.

He forced the girl to strip naked on the pretext of looking for bruises, before groping her mother’s private parts and breasts on the same occasion, Snaresbrook Crown Court heard.

Rahman, 61, was convicted of seven counts of indecent assault after a trial last month.

Sentencing him, Judge Simon Freeland said: “You abused your position of trust and respect for your own sexual gratification.

“You took advantage of your position as a social worker and you indecently assaulted a 10-year-old girl and her mother.

“This was a gross and blatant breach of trust with many and varied aggravating factors.

“You abused the mother when you knew she was in a vulnerable state, and you knew she had a violent husband.”

Rahman, who was 44 at the time, has already served an 18-month sentence, after being convicted of a similar assault on a client in 1996.

He dabbed at his eyes with a tissue as he was led to the cells.

The daughter sat silently in the public gallery as he was sentenced.

Rahman, of Wembley, north west London, escaped a longer sentence after the court heard he has a life expectancy of just seven years after kidney failure left him on dialysis.

He was sentenced to four years and six months in respect of the three counts of sexually abusing the daughter with three-and-a-half years consecutively for sexually abusing the mother.

Rahman denied seven counts of indecent assault.