A newsagent worker who sexually assaulted an 11-year-old girl as she shopped for a friend's birthday card has been jailed.

Selvaratnam Muthurajah, 49, assaulted the girl during a shift at Best Value in Tudor Drive last October, and was told by a judge today he had caused the child "real psychological damage".

As she looked for a birthday card for a friend, he approached her and suggested a number of cards.

He put one in her shopping basket and, as he withdrew his hand, touched her sexually over her clothes, Kingston Crown Court heard today.

He touched her a second time after she had moved away into the sweets section, prosecutors said.

Sentencing Muthurajah, of Meadowbank, Berrylands, to eight months in prison, Judge Susan Tapping said: "Life for her at home and at school has not been the same since.

"About a month earlier she had started at secondary school. Her parents were gently and carefully encouraging her in her first steps of independent movement.

"She had the bad luck to be in there alone - that is no one's fault. Nor could it have been foreseen that you would take advantage of her.

"You have changed her life and inflicted real psychological damage. It is unsurprising to read that the whole family has been affected."

In addition to his prison sentence Muthurajah, a father of three who currently works at Asda in Kingston, was also handed a sexual harm prevention order, designed to protect his victim, that excludes him from entering a swathe of the borough.

It will not be lifted until the girl leaves full-time education.

Rabin Govindarajah, defending, said his client played a "pivotal" part in his family's life and was a role model for his three children.

He said: "He accepts the criminality of what he has pleaded to. He is deeply ashamed."

Muthurajah, wearing a shirt and hoodie in the dock, appeared impassive as his sentence was handed down and stood with his arms folded as Judge Tapping read her remarks.