A MAN aged 80 who groped a girl's breasts and exposing himself to her has been spared an immediate prison sentence due to his poor health.

Wheelchair-bound John Horry had committed a raft of sexual offences against two children and a woman, between 1976 and 2013, Bradford Crown Court heard.

Judge David Hatton QC told him yesterday he would have gone straight to jail if he had not been in such poor health.

Horry, of Fell Lane, Keighley, pleaded guilty to ten charges, including seven counts of indecently and sexually assaulting a girl aged 12 to 17, and gross indecency with her, and three charges of attempted sexual assault and sexual assault on a woman in her 40s.

The court heard he was jailed for six months in 1976 for sexually assaulting another girl.

Prosecutor Peter Hampton said the later offences involved him groping his victims' breasts over clothing.

He had also exposed himself to the girl, grunting and grinning as he waved his penis around.

Mr Hampton said Horry abused the girl on numerous occasions but she was too scared to do anything about it.

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He told her he could go to jail if she said anything.

Horry then molested a woman who was helping to care for him.

She managed to block him when he twice tried to touch her breasts but he then caught her off guard and squeezed them.

"She felt sick and shaken up," Mr Hampton said.

Horry's barrister, Camille Morland, conceded they were serious offences.

But Horry was an octogenarian in very poor health.

"He very much regrets the offences," she said.

Horry was housebound, lonely and isolated.

Miss Morland said that if he was sent to prison he would never leave the hospital wing.

Judge Hatton said Horry had many different ailments, all of them permanent.

"You are a very poorly man and rarely leave your home except to go to hospital," he said.

Horry was sentenced to a total of 21 months imprisonment, suspended for two years.

The judge made a Sexual Harm Prevention Order and ordered him to sign on the sex offenders' register for five years.