A BOLTON businessman who sexually assaulted a schoolgirl has been spared jail.

Following a trial at Bolton Crown Court, Michael Axford, a director of Farnworth based timber merchants Anthony Axford, was convicted of abusing the 13-year-old girl.

At the sentencing hearing, Judge Graeme Smith heard how the conviction has ruined 48-year-old Axford’s previous good character.

“He has been regarded as a stalwart member of society. This conviction will end all that,” said Andrew Nuttall, defending.

The jury had heard how Axford, of Lynwood Avenue, Great Lever, had been at the same house as the girl on December 14 2014.

But when she fell asleep on the sofa he put his hand under her clothing and touched her.

The girl woke to find him committing the assault, having also moved one of her feet up against his crotch.

David James, prosecuting told the sentencing hearing that Axford, who had been drinking, then left the room and the girl picked up her mobile phone.

“She tried to seek information over the internet about what had happened to her,” he said.

When the girl discovered that Axford’s behaviour was sexual assault, she contacted her mother and he was arrested.

Axford denied sexually touching the girl who, in a victim impact statement, said having to give evidence against him in court had been “excruciating.”

In her statement she revealed that she now regularly has nightmares about Axford and has stopped being the “positive and confident” girl she was previously.

“I have even contemplated suicide as I feel completely overwhelmed,” she said.

“What he did to me that night was what no 13-year-old should experience.”

In a probation report compiled following the trial Axford maintained he had not committed the crime.

Mr Nuttall stressed that Axford had not used any violence, threats or overt force towards the girl and had not touched her genitalia.

He added that the conviction means that Axford, whose firm employs 65 people, will be adversely affected by the conviction as he will no longer be able to travel to the USA.

“He has worked up from humble beginnings and has, to a large extent, been very successful in the business he has helped manage and create,” said Mr Nuttall.

Sentencing Axford to 12 months in jail, suspended for two years, Judge Smith told him he accepted that the offence was out of character.

“This can be described, at best, as opportunistic and may well have been affected by what you drank that evening,” he said, adding that the businessman had used his belief that the girl was asleep for his own sexual gratification.

Axford was also ordered to do 240 hours unpaid work and placed on the sex offenders register.

A five year sexual harm prevention order was also made banning him from contacting his victim, having unauthorised contact with any child under the age of 16, and he must not live or sleep at the same address as any child without social services approval.