A 64-year-old man who repeatedly sexually abused three young girls leaving them traumatised has been jailed for 17 years.

Stephen Miller molested the young girls when they were between the ages of five and ten years old.

Although he had admitted some of the abuse he denied the more serious allegations, only to be convicted of all of the charges by a jury at Swindon Crown Court last year.

Now after a judge rejected an objection from the sex offender's barrister to hear one of the victims read her impact statement Miller has been jailed.

Before the girl read the lengthy statement, telling of the damage caused to her by the abuse, barrister Michael Butt asked for her to not read it aloud.

He said: "I ask what is to be gained by her reading it?" saying the judge could read it himself.

But Judge Tim Mousley QC replied: "I can see no basis for her not to follow the course that she wishes to follow."

The victim, now a teenager, said in the statement that she had contemplated suicide and had many other issues as a result of the abuse which started at such a young age.

"It made me feel completely alone and helpless. I was scared and am still scared today. I was immorally sexualised at a very young age," she said.

"The first time I said the words 'I have been sexually abused' I broke down in to a million pieces.

"I try not to define myself by my sexual abuse but it affects everything I do, everything I think."

In statement read by Hannah Squire, prosecuting, the two other girls also told how they had suffered greatly as a result of the abuse.

Miller, of Langford Road, Trowbridge, admitted indecent assault and sexual assault on the first victim, two counts of sexual activity with a child on the second and indecent assault on the third.

He denied indecent assault and two counts of sexual assault on the first girl, four indecent assaults and two sexual assaults on the second and four indecent assaults and four sexual assaults on the third.

But following a trial a jury found him guilty of the 17 counts he had denied. All of the offending was between 2000 and 2007.

Mr Butt said his client realised he was facing a lengthy jail term but pointed out his age and that he and his wife both had health problems.

Jailing him, the judge said: "The main consideration I have in sentencing you is the ordeal that these three children had to go through and the effect that your behaviour has had upon them.

"It will be long lasting. Anybody who has heard what they have written and said in their statements can be in no doubt about that. One can only hope in the passage of time things will improve.

"Eventually they found the courage to say what you had done to them and they were able to speak out and be believed.

"The purpose of your having a trial, I am satisfied, was to limit the extent of your offending and no more than that.

"The jury saw through that effort and the verdicts they returned is one step in the recovery that the three children are going through.

"This went on over several years and you never thought for a moment of the untold psychological damage you would cause to them.

"You were motivated by your own selfish and perverted sexual gratification."