A MAN was jailed for indecently assaulting a ten-year-old girl more than 13 years ago after he spilled out his sordid fantasies to his ex-wife.

Newport crown court heard the incident came to light after 57-year-old Gordon Nicholas Griffin told his ex-wife about his sexual fantasies in a telephone call last year.

Disturbed by what she had heard, she reported him to the police, whose inquiries uncovered the indecent assault at his home in Park Street, Cross Keys, during 1990, which echoed one of his fantasies.

Jonathan Austin, prosecuting, said the girl had been using the phone at Griffin's house to listen to a chatline advertised in a magazine. He said Griffin, a former soldier, invited her to sit on his knee so he could listen in on the phone call. "When she did so, she soon felt he was kissing her to the back of her neck and felt very uncomfortable," he said.

Mr Austin said Griffin was disturbed by a noise and the assault ended. Defending Griffin, Hilary Roberts said he had pleaded guilty at the earliest opportunity and had no previous convictions.

He said: "The defendant had been drinking. I don't put that forward as an excuse, but he thinks it perhaps led to his disinhibition. It is something he has regretted ever since."

Mr Roberts said Griffin had been unable to work full-time following a road accident ten years ago and, more recently, bowel cancer.

Sentencing Griffin to nine months' imprisonment, Judge Jonathan Durham Hall, QC, said he had to express society's "deep revulsion at this offence".Judge Hall said: "There's a deeper and darker side to you, Mr Griffin, which came to the surface some ten or more years ago and about which you seemed to be talking in some gloating terms in more recent times".

Griffin must register as a sex offender for ten years. He was disqualified from working with children for life.