A former vicar who sexually abused a woman and a girl, who he told “it was what God wanted”, has been jailed for eight years.

Meirion Griffiths, 81, was convicted of four counts of indecent assault last month following a six-day retrial.

He had moved to Perth in Australia from Chichester, in West Sussex, but was extradited to the UK to face justice.

Sentencing him, the judge at Portsmouth Crown Court said Griffiths’ actions were an “enormous breach of trust”.

Judge Roger Hetherington described the effects on the two “highly-impressionable, naive and innocent” victims as “devastating”.

Griffiths was a Church of England vicar at St Pancras Church in Chichester at the time of the offences.

He was found guilty of two counts of indecent assault against teenager Julie Macfarlane – who has waived her right to anonymity – during the mid-1970s, one of them involving multiple occasions.

She told the BBC she was 16 when she went to Griffiths to discuss doubts about her faith.

“That was when the first of what was a year-long of sexual assaults happened,” she said.

Griffiths was also convicted of two counts of indecent assault against a woman in her mid-20s in 1982.

He was found not guilty of two counts of indecent assault, one against each of the women.