A PAEDOPHILE is beginning a nine year prison sentence after going on trial for offences against a young girl for the third time.

In March 2013, at Bolton Crown Court, 58-year-old Nicholas West was convicted of a series of sexual assaults against a young girl and was jailed.

But the following year he won an appeal against his conviction on the grounds that the judge’s summing up of the case to the jury was defective.

West, of Elmwood Grove, Farnworth, was retried in April this year but the jury failed to reach a verdict and so a third case against him began this week.

After a four-day trial a jury of eight women and four men at Bolton Crown Court unanimously found him guilty of five counts of indecent assault and a further three counts of indecency with a child.

He was cleared of another five indecent assault charges.

During the trial the jury heard how West used the girl, who he abused frequently between the ages of eight and 12, to satisfy his own sexual desires.

The abuse against the victim, who is now in her 20s, had such a devastating effect upon her that she resorted to shaving her head because she wanted to be a boy and it went onto badly affect her life as an adult.

She told police in an interview: “It got worse as I got older. I tried to blank it out for years. Everything came back. I could not handle it. I tried to forget it — I cannot.”

Sentencing West, who stood emotionless in the dock, the Honorary Recorder of Bolton, Judge Timothy Clayson said: “Regrettably you have shown no remorse for what you did — it was, quite frankly, dreadful.

“This is effectively something she has had to live with and keep at the back of her mind for years.”