HE MADE a girl's life a living hell throughout her childhood and early womanhood - now this paedophile may die behind bars.

"Domineering", "callous" and "cruel" former soldier Gordon Welsh, 69, raped her repeatedly for nearly two decades, starting when she was 11, York Crown Court heard.

Welsh fathered a child with her, made her lie about its paternity to her mother and social security officers and threatened to ensure that she lost the child unless she kept silent.

When she finally told the truth after decades of silence, the child Welsh had fathered renounced her and her family ostracised her.

"You have ruined her life," the Recorder of York, Judge Paul Hoffman, told Welsh.

He jailed Welsh for 16 years. Defence barrister Michael Greenhalgh said Welsh was awaiting the results of tests to see if he had bowel cancer.

The court heard Welsh was also asthmatic and had an arthritic back.

The judge told Welsh: "You are in my view a cruel, domineering and callous man.

"You systematically raped her, turning her into a sexual object for your sexual desires.

"You held her captive to your wishes by threats which changed over the years to meet the circumstances.

"Initially, it was a threat that nobody would believe her - and you would deny it.

"It escalated to a threat to kill her and then you threatened to take away her most precious thing in her life, that is her child."

Welsh, of Green Acres, Kellington, near Eggborough, North Yorkshire, denied 17 charges of rape, but admitted two charges of committing a serious sexual offence.

The jury convicted him on the rape charges after just over an hour in retirement. The detective who brought him to justice, Det Con Deborah Outwin, got a commendation from the judge.

Welsh stood impassively in the dock as the verdicts were given and as the judge jailed him and put him on the sex offenders' register for life.