Joe Duggan (Reporter)
A ‘SICK and violent’ paedophile who once appeared on X-Factor has lost his Mallorca appeal for raping a child.
Manuel Pons Sanchez, 46, was jailed last August for attacking the girl in Menorca.
Spain’s Supreme Court ruled that Pons Sanchez’s initial sentence of 23 years and six months should stand.
The Palma court heard Pons Sanchez had tied the girl to a bed and beaten her.
Pons Sanchez, who appeared on the hit ITV reality show in 2009, repeatedly attacked the girl when she was aged six to ten.
Pons Sanchez fled to England in 2004 after committing the crimes, but was reported to Spanish police by the victim’s mother in 2007.
He was arrested in January last year after applying for a Spanish passport in the UK.
While on the run in England, he appeared on the X-Factor while working at a Merseyside hospital.
He made it to the boot camp round of X-Factor.
