A 76-year-old “sex tourist” paedophile who raped a little girl in the Philippines has been jailed for 17 years.

Raymond Keeley exploited the girl to rape her when she was aged under ten and he was old enough to be her grandfather, Recorder Jonathan Sandiford QC said.

Keeley, of Cordingley Close, near Holme Lane, Tong, Bradford, was convicted by a jury at Bradford Crown Court of committing the offences over a decade ago when he was in his mid-sixties.

Today, the court heard that his victim had suffered severe psychological damage.

She had anxiety and depression, sleepless nights and flashbacks.

Keeley’s barrister, Camille Morland, said he didn’t know if he would survive the jail term, fearing that he may never see the light of day again.

Recorder Sandiford told him that he must have hoped this day would never come.

He had acted as “a sex tourist” in the Philippines, the court was told during this afternoon's hearing.

Keeley was labelled “a devious predatory paedophile” who had caused a defenceless child terrible pain and suffering and tried to put the blame for the situation on his young victim.

He was old enough to be her grandfather and had used her as a sex object, the recorder said.

He was jailed for 17 years with a year-long licence period.

In 2017, Keeley was jailed for three years at Bradford Crown Court after he fled the country to start a new life with a Filipino bride he met on Facebook.

He paid for a flight to Manila using funds from a secret bank account when he should have been attending the Sex Offender Treatment Programme for abusing a girl of six.

He was tracked down by West Yorkshire Police and Interpol after a missing persons alert was triggered when he disappeared off the probation service's radar in October 2013.

He was arrested on a warrant and held in a detention centre in the Philippines for four months before funding his own flight back to the UK.

Keeley had been jailed for two years in December, 2012, for six offences of sexually assaulting the little girl during trips to the Philippines.

But his sentence was altered by the Appeal Court to a three year community order with the condition that he attended the Sex Offender Treatment Programme.

The alarm was raised when he missed appointments with the probation service and used a credit card for a bank account he had hidden from the police to take a ferry from Portsmouth to France and a flight on to Manila.

He was apprehended and flown back to the UK.

He pleaded guilty to four offences of breaching the terms of the sex offender register and breaching the community order by failing to tell the police about the bank account and leaving the UK without permission.

His two year jail sentence was reduced to a community order after he confessed to the church about what he had done.