A professed faith healer who persuaded a superstitious mother to let him sleep with her daughter from the age of 10 until she was 16 to remove a curse has been convicted of sexual-abuse charges and jailed for 15 months.

Yesterday's ruling ended an eight-year legal nightmare for the unnamed victim; the abuser, 52-year-old psychic Hugo Llorenz, had three separate trials.

Mr. Llorenz, who claimed the girl would die on her 16th birthday without his "treatments," terrorized the child into submission by using fishing line to shake a chandelier in the dark, telling her it was a demon. He was convicted of sexual assault, sexual interference, sexual exploitation and gross indecency.

He was convicted in 1995, but the Ontario Court of Appeal ordered a new trial in 2000, citing an error in the way the prosecution presented its case to the jury. Mr. Llorenz had served 4½ years of an eight-year sentence. His first trial, in 1994, ended in a mistrial.

Mr. Justice Arthur Gans of the Ontario Superior Court, who heard the case alone, found that Mr. Llorenz is a pedophile who exploited the mother's belief in an ancient African religion called Santeria to gain access to the girl and have sex with her "hundreds of times" between 1985 and 1991.

He told her during a tarot card reading that he would need to spend a lot of time alone with the child to work on removing the curse.

The treatments included sexual intercourse and fellatio, and Mr. Llorenz provided props, including crotchless underwear and pornographic videos, the judge said.

When the girl approached the age of 16, she realized Mr. Llorenz was a charlatan, the judge said, but waited two years, until 1993, to report him to police.

"She was a scared and confused young woman," Judge Gans said, dismissing the defence argument that the delay undermined her credibility.

Mr. Llorenz continued to deny the charges as he was sentenced yesterday.

"You are the one who makes the decisions and I totally respect your decisions," he told the judge through a Spanish interpreter. "But I continue arguing that, in my case, I am innocent."

He testified earlier that he never laid a hand on the girl in an inappropriate way, that he wanted to be her moral guardian because her mother neglected her, and that she made up the sex allegations as a result of hanging around with a bad crowd in high school.

Judge Gans found there was no truth in Mr. Llorenz's statements, and said his claim of moral guardianship was not credible considering the pornographic videos and teen-sized undergarments found by police when his apartment was searched in 1993.

The 15-month sentence imposed by the judge was calculated as the portion remaining on the eight-year sentence handed down by Madam Justice Patricia German in 1995.

Although it adds up to less than six years when combined with the 4½ years Mr. Llorenz has served, that fairly reflects the normal provisions for mandatory release after two-thirds of a sentence has been served, the judge said. He also imposed two years of probation with terms that can be removed if immigration authorities deport Mr. Llorenz to his native Argentina.

Crown prosecutor Jon Ball said yesterday that the victim now wants more than anything for Mr. Llorenz to be deported.

But he feared that deportation proceedings could be delayed if immigration authorities interpret the sentence as 15 months, not 15 months plus 4½ years, since deportation is automatic only for an offence punishable by two years imprisonment.