A YORK photographer has started a prison sentence and has been banned from ever working with children again after he sexually abused a ten-year-old girl.

Lee Smyth refuses to accept that he is a paedophile, despite a jury believing the girl’s account of how he went into her bedroom four times in one night and sexually touched her, York Crown Court heard.

His barrister, Katherine Goddard, said he had behaved out of character and at a time when he had been drinking.

The Recorder of York, Judge Stephen Ashurst, told him: “Drink can never provide an excuse for the sexual touching of a child. The fact you entered this room four times during that night demonstrates a clear awareness of what you were doing, the risks you were running and the potential damage if you were found out.”

He said the jury had decided the girl was an “honest and compelling” witness and that Smyth had shown no remorse about the effect of his actions on her, though he was concerned about the effect on his own family of his imprisonment.

The judge accepted Smyth had struggled for years with a serious drink problem and had drunk heavily on the day of the offence.

Smyth, 42, who worked professionally from an address in Fossgate and is originally from Northern Ireland, was convicted unanimously by the jury of sexual touching of a child under 13 in January.

He had denied the offence.

He was jailed for 21 months, put on the sex offenders’ register for ten years and barred from working with children for life.

Miss Goddard handed in testimonials for Smyth.

She said he was not a “classic sex offender” and the abuse was an “isolated incident”.

Since then, he had curtailed his drinking so that he had “effectively eliminated” alcohol from his life and he had been working with statutory authorities including probation.