THE former owner of a Bolton restaurant has been jailed for two years after pleading guilty to a series of sexual assaults on teenage girls.

Angelo Guido, aged 64, of Blackburn Road, Egerton, had carried out the offences against the four teenagers over a period of more than three years, Bolton Crown Court heard.

Two of the victims were 15 at the time of the offences, while the other two were 16 and 17 when they were assaulted.

Guido would touch, slap and squeeze the girls’ bottoms, sometimes leaving his hand in place for a number of seconds, leaving them ‘frozen’ in fear, Sarah Johnson, for the Crown, told the court.

And he would also use taking the girls out in his car as a tactic to isolate them and make it less likely they would be seen by witnesses.

The most serious examples of his offending included him running his hand up the girls’ thighs and touching them over their groin and genital areas.

Guido, the former owner of Angelo’s Café Bar and Pizzeria, in Blackburn Road, also showed two of the girls that he was aroused and on one occasion pressed his erection against one of them.

There were two charges relating to each victim. Each one was a specimen charge to reflect the repeated nature of the offending.

Miss Johnson said Guido had carried out a ‘campaign of offending’ against the girls.

She said each of them had told, in their, own terms about the difficulty and impact the offences had on them.

Michael Maher, defending, said Guido wasn’t a ‘sexual predator to the core’ and there was another, family-orientated, side to his character.

He said: “However grubby this series of offences are, there is something intensely sad about a man in his 60s who has led an industrious and productive working life facing a custodial sentence.”

Judge Richard Gioserano told Guido his ‘regular sexual offending’ was ‘systematic, cynical and with no thought to the harm you would cause your victims’.

He added: “Make no mistake, you have harmed those girls. I have read each one of the victims’ personal statements.

“To give one example, one girl now feels anxious in the presence of any other adult man and can’t even go to see a male doctor without feeling anxious.

“That’s the psychological damage you have done to her and the other victims.”

He added: “Their vulnerability was taken by you as an opportunity to indulge your sexual gratification.”

And he told the court that a pre-sentence report found that Guido had sought to minimise what he had done by claiming he had only touched them on the leg or shoulder ‘in a jokey manner’.

Judge Gioserano added: “By seeking to minimise what you did, you have not expressed any shame or remorse for the harm you undoubtedly caused your victims.”

Guido was sentenced to two years in prison, half of which must be spent in custody, while the other half will be spent on licence.

He will also have to sign the sex offenders’ register for 10 years.