A pensioner who groomed and sexually abused a young girl faces the prospect of dying in prison.

Reginald Warry, 86, was jailed for 12 years at Oxford Crown Court this week after he was found guilty late last year of eight counts of sexual assault.

The Barton man touched the girl, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, over several years starting when she was eight.

In a victim personal statement summarised to the court by prosecutor Abigail Husbands, the youngster said she had nightmares about what happened to her.

“She finds it hard sometimes to go to sleep in fear of having a nightmare and having flashbacks. She’s lost trust in people,” Ms Husbands said.

The girl’s mother said in her own statement that she will ‘forever blame and hate herself’.

Ms Husbands summarised: “She finds it hard to look at old photos of [her daughter] when she was growing up because her initial thought was, ‘was she being abused then?’”

Sending him down for 12 years and ordering he spend an additional year on licence as an offender of particular concern, Judge Nigel Daly noted that Warry had shown no remorse for what he did to the girl.

He said: “The nature of this offending is a series of increasingly serious sexual offending over a period of years against the same victim.”

Warry’s victim had trusted him and was ‘particularly vulnerable’, the judge said. “We have heard a little of the effect this has had upon her. It will affect her, I have no doubt, for the rest of her life.

“You relied on the trust and her lack of understanding of your behaviour so that you could groom her.”

Mitigating, Sumita Mahtab-Shaikh said her client had a background of kidney disease and suffered from other health complaints.

He was a carer for his wife, to whom he had been married since 1958, and looked after the couple’s finances. “I think it is clear from the sentence that Mr Warry receives today there will be a detrimental impact on Mrs Warry.”

Warry had worked in engineering in a managerial capacity and retired a decade ago. He had no previous convictions.

Warry, of Bayswater Farm Road, Barton, was found guilty of six counts of sexual assault and two charges of sexual assault by penetration of a child under-13. He was sentenced to 12 years’ imprisonment and an additional year on licence as a sexual offender of particular concern. He will be on the sex offender register for life.