LEEDS, England - A 61-year-old man was sent to prison yesterday because the dead grandmother of one of his victims revealed to medium Patrick Hutchinson that the girl had been abused. He was convicted of five charges of indecently assaulting three girls aged from nine to 11 between 1997 and 2001.

Among those in Leeds Crown Court to see father-of-eight Terrance Dunstan jailed for over five-and-a-half years was medium Patrick Hutchinson, who relayed the spirit message which brought the abuse to light.

Hutchinson was giving a demonstration of mediumship in a pub when he became aware of a persistent spirit communicator who was the grandmother of a young woman in the audience.

She revealed that her granddaughter had been abused a decade earlier and the person responsible was still at large. Hutchinson felt he should not reveal this publicly and that it would be better to speak to her privately. But the spirit of her grandmother insisted that he conveyed her message, otherwise it might be swept under the carpet.

The victim, now aged 20, who was attending the demonstration with her mother, broke down when he passed the message on. It was obvious from the mother's reaction that she was unaware that her daughter had been abused.

Later, the young woman confided in a 19-year-old friend and she revealed that Dunstan had also abused her. As a result, last October they both decided to report what had happened to the police.

A third woman, now aged 17, later made similar allegations about Dunstan.

During the trial, the court was told that in March 2005 Dunstan had admitted four charges of assaulting three other girls aged under 16 between 1989 and 2004. Astonishingly, he was only given a community order for those offences.

As a result of this latest trial and conviction he will remain on the sex offenders' register for life.

The Yorkshire Evening Post was among the newspapers reporting this extraordinary case of spirit intervention and its website also carries an eight-minute video interview with the medium. The girl's mother told the newspaper: "I don't know how the psychic did it, but going to the pub that night really helped my daughter get her confidence back and get on with her life."