Alfie Holt sexually assaulted an 11-year-old schoolgirl on a bus to Burnley as she was travelling with her mother and brother.
The retired painter and decorate ‘clocked’ the victim and got up from his seat to move ‘directly next to her’.
Her mother was ‘concerned and kept an eye on him’ and gestured for her daughter to sit close to her but ‘she said she was fine’.
Another male passenger told police that he saw Alfie Holt move to sit next to the victim and ‘thought his behaviour was strange’.
He then witnessed the pensioner put his hand up the girls skirt and ‘could not believe what he was seeing’.
Burnley Crown Court heard that the passenger stood up and grabbed Alfie Holt and he was ‘ultimately detained’.
The bus driver stopped the bus and the defendant was prevented from getting off until police arrived to arrest him.
Officers described how Alfie Holt ‘smelt strongly of alcohol and was unsteady on his feet’.
The victim was left feeling ‘confused, scared and nervous’.
In his police interview, Holt accepted getting on the bus and seeing the victim before moving to sit on the back seat.
However he told officers that he accidentally put his hand on her knee ‘due to a movement of the bus going round the corner’.
The court heard that he had been drinking pints and spirits in Nelson and was ‘alcohol dependent’.
A statement from the victims mother read out at court told how her daughter has undergone ‘psychological changes’ and will ‘not under any circumstances travel on a bus’.
Alfie Holt, from Padiham, pleaded guilty to sexual assault.
Ms Worsley said he has 12 convictions on his record, including offences of attempted rape, indecent exposure and indecent assault in the 1960s and 1970s.
Alfie Holt was given a nine-month jail sentence, suspended for two years with a 20-day rehabilitation activity day and ordered to attend a sexual offences treatment programme.
Alfie Holt was also made subject to a 10-year sexual harm prevention order and place on the sex offenders register.
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