A rapist who repeatedly forced himself on a schoolgirl, even after she bore his child, has been jailed for 18 and a half years.

The judge told Gary Mee that he had robbed his victim of her "virginity, childhood and much of her schooling", after hearing how he had repeatedly raped her throughout her teenage years.

Mee, 51, of Chapel Street, Queensbury, continued to abuse the girl even though she twice became pregnant.

On the first occasion she had a miscarriage, but three years later she gave birth to Mee's child.

A Bradford Crown Court jury yesterday unanimously found him guilty of eight counts of rape and three counts of indecency with a child.

Jailing Mee, the Honorary Recorder of Bradford Judge Stephen Gullick, told him that the fact that the girl had conceived his child was a serious aggravating feature of the case.

The court was told Mee had denied he had ever had sex with the girl, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, until he was told by police the DNA evidence had revealed the chances of him not being the father of her child were one in nine million.

Then he invented a story that he had had sex with her on one occasion.

He told the court he was drunk and she had flirted with him and he had not known anything about it until the morning.

Mee stood impassively in the dock as Judge Gullick told him he had not shown a shred of remorse for what he had done to the girl.

Ordering Mee to sign on the sex offenders' register for the rest of his life, Judge Gullick said: "These are extremely serious matters involving sexual abuse over a considerable period of time and a lengthy custodial sentence will follow.

"You were determined to keep a tight control of her and you cynically used her for your own sexual gratification."

The trial at Bradford Crown Court had been told Mee began abusing the girl when she was 11. Richard Mansell, prosecuting, described to jurors how Mee would regularly abuse the girl so much that it became part of her life.

"The abuse continued and it mainly involved him having sexual intercourse with her without her consent," he said.

"It happened regularly and became part of her life for the next few years."

He told the court the girl had described the abuse by saying: "This had become part of my life. I believed it was something I should accept until he decided it should stop."

The abuse did eventually stop when she confronted Mee about what he was doing in the late 1990s.

"Not once did he apologise for what went on in the preceding nine to ten years," said Mr Mansell.