A PERVERT who groomed and started a sexual relationship with an underage Newport girl sent her a sick letter declaring his love for her three months after being found out.

In the letter, Gareth Robert Lloyd, 54, of Priory Way, Langstone, Newport, begs her to text him "to put my mind at rest" after hearing she told police she was scared of him.

He adds: "I will always remember you as my little princess and I will love you until the day I die."

Last night, the girl's mother branded Lloyd "disgusting" and said she was furious he had tried to get back into the vulnerable youngster's life.

Lloyd was jailed for three years last week after admitting three counts of sexual activity with the girl and a charge of sexual grooming.

The distraught 16-year-old, from Newport, who was 15 at the time of the offences, has taken two overdoses and regularly harms herself since she came into contact with Gareth Robert Lloyd in January last year.

Her ordeal began after she jokingly texted a phone number Lloyd had scrawled on a bus seat.

Lloyd, who initially claimed to be a 16-year-old called Matt, exchanged dozens of texts with the girl over the following month before meeting the girl in Newport in February 2007.

By the time of the meeting Lloyd told the girl he was 43-years-old.

He carried out the offences in a room he had booked at Newport's Walkabout Inn and during a second meeting at a Newport cinema.

In his letter, Lloyd describes the cinema trip as "the best Saturday I have had in my entire life".

He even added his mobile phone number for his victim to text him.

Speaking of the letter, which was sent in June 2007, the girl's mother said: "We were angry.

"How dare he think he could come back into her life after all he'd done to her.

"We rarely let her out of our sight now. Her life will never be the same."

Last week a judge placed Lloyd in the sex offenders register for life and banned him from working with children indefinitely.

How secret liaison came to light THE secret liaisons eventually came to light after the girl told a school friend who reported it to a teacher in March last year.

Now her anguished mother is warning other teenagers not to be taken in by strangers who shower them with attention.

She said: "She doesn't want to be herself anymore. It hurts beyond belief.

"I hate him for what he has done to her. People can say she was stupid but she was taken in by the attention."

The girl has found it too difficult to return to school and now has a home tutor as she studies for her GCSEs.