A PAEDOPHILE who sexually abused a girl when she was aged as young as 14 has been jailed.

Stephen Griffiths indecently assaulted the teenager in St Helens on multiple occasions and even plied her with class A drugs.

Liverpool Crown Court – sitting at a Nightingale Court in Liverpool One’s Hilton Hotel – heard yesterday, Friday, that the abuse was committed over a period of around two years.

The 40-year-old began grooming his victim in a string of messages and also sent her sexual images of himself.

Griffiths then sexually assaulted her in a taxi on one occasion before a second attack followed at a house party.

He followed the youngster into a bathroom and placed a coin loaded with cocaine under her nose before telling her to sniff, then touched her inappropriately – causing her to be physically sick afterwards.

The victim bravely read out a statement to the court highlighting the impact of his vile crimes upon her, saying: “I never felt safe when he was roaming the streets and feared he would be hiding around the corner.

“I doubt this will ever leave me – I still continue to live in fear.

“Every child has nightmares of monsters under their bed – my monster was and still is in my head.

“I have to live with what that monster did to me for the rest of my life.

“When will I be happy again?

“My outlook on the world has completely changed – I don’t believe I’m safe anymore because of monsters like him.

“All of this pain and trauma was caused by one man – I will never forgive and never forget.

“He has never shown any remorse – he doesn’t understand the severity of his calculated actions.

“His abuse has damaged me for life.

“I have to live with the life sentence that man has given me.”

Griffiths, who appeared via video link to prison, was found guilty of two counts of sexual assault, engaging in sexual communications with a child and causing a child to watch a person engaging in sexual activity following a trial earlier this year.

Defence barrister Martine Snowdon told the court that her client has overcome his cocaine addiction while remanded in custody and now ‘realises the error of his ways’.

She added: “Frankly, he’s in a better place now than he has been for years.

“I simply ask your honour to make the sentence as short as possible.”

Recorder Eric Lamb locked Griffiths, of Houston Gardens in Warrington, up for two years and nine months.

Sentencing, he said: “You are now able to see your conduct for what it truly was.

“You have now come to your senses and realised the harm that you have done.

“Anybody, including yourself, seeing her moving description of the impact upon her could not fail to recognise just what a devastating effect your offending had upon her young life.

“These offences occurred over a lengthy period of time and there was a significant disparity in age between yourself and her.

“I take the view that your offending is so serious that only a custodial sentence may be justified for it.”

Griffiths was also handed a lifelong notification requirement and a restraining order preventing him from contacting the victim for the next 10 years.

He will serve half of his sentence in prison before being released on licence.