A SEX pest has been jailed for eight years after his sordid, secret past caught up with him.

To the outside world Barry Llewellyn Pugh, 65, was the height of respectability.

What was not known was that he had sexually abused a child years ago which had a great impact on her life.

Now he must register as a sex offender for life.

The victim, now in her 20s, told Mold Crown Court jury she now felt like “damaged goods” and she found it difficult to form relationships after what Pugh did to her more than 10 years ago.

Pugh, of Ruthin Road, Bwlchgwyn, near Wrexham, denied 11 charges of indecent assault on the woman when she was a child and claimed no such thing happened.

But he was convicted of 10 of the charges – of sexually assaulting her from the age of about 11 or 12.

He admitted taking indecent photographs of her in her underwear, but Judge Philip Hughes told him he was satisfied it went further than that and he had taken topless photographs of the child “to satisfy your sexual interest in her”.

Pugh must serve two thirds of the eight year sentence. The court heard the maximum sentences for the offences at the time was 10 years. Nowadays it was life imprisonment.

Some of the offences occurred in a jacuzzi when he was naked and he told the girl not to wear any clothes because he claimed the fibres would clog up the filters.

On another occasion he indecently assaulted her near a lake in the countryside and a cyclist went past as she screamed in pain.

But he smacked her legs hard, put his hand over her mouth to stop her screaming and told her: “It would be really easy to lose you up here.” He said he could simply say she had got lost in the lake.

On the last occasion he grabbed her but she struck him hard. She told the jury that but for that she feared he would have raped her. He called her “a selfish little bitch”.

The judge told him: “There is no knowing how much emotional damage you have caused her and which may remain to blight her life through adulthood.

“She regards herself as being damaged goods and feels unable to form normal relationships,” he said.

The judge said he took into account Pugh’s age, his previous good conduct and that the offences occurred more than a decade ago.

“As you rightly anticipate, a prison sentence is inevitable,” the judge told him.

Prosecutor Karl Sholtz said the victim was undergoing counselling, suffered from depression, extreme anxiety, panic attacks and blackouts. She also had nightmares.

“It is clear the events of her childhood still haunt her,” Mr Scholtz said.

Nicholas Clarke, defending, said there had been a long delay in the case and it was to be hoped the trial process could now bring some closure for the complainant.

Pugh was a man of good character, said Mr Clarke, who stressed there had been no penile penetration or rape.