A MAN who sexually assaulted a young girl has been jailed for four years by a judge in Oxford Crown Court.

Peter Mace, of Hill Rise, Woodstock, was convicted after a trial for carrying out the offence between December 20 and 23, 2012.

The 40-year-old had tears in his eyes on Friday when Judge Patrick Eccles told him he had no choice but to give him an immediate prison sentence.

Terence Woods, defending, said his client had committed the offence while drinking heavily and did not fit the profile of a normal sex offender.

He said: “It was mostly binge drinking. He would go months without consuming alcohol and then be lost for days.”

Mr Woods added that Mace had also recently become aware that a boy he thought was his son had actually been fathered by someone else.

The barrister explained this had a “devastating” effect on the defendant and was shortly followed by him being made redundant.

Judge Eccles said the offence was shocking and told Mace: “You have brought about the ruin of your own life by this one act.

“On any view this was a revolting and unnatural offence, which had profound emotional consequences for your victim.

“Both the offence and the experience of having to come to court to relive it has had a very great impact, to the point where she couldn’t complete her evidence.

“The fact that you do not fall into the pattern of a paedophile does not change the harm that is done to little children by anybody who interferes with them in a sexual way like you did.”

Mace will be on the sex offenders’ register for the rest of his life.