Schoolgirl Tia Sharp met a “sudden and violent death” at the hands of her grandmother’s boyfriend after he sexually assaulted her, a court has heard.

Stuart Hazell then posed the lifeless 12-year-old face down on her bloodstained bed and took a picture “for the purposes of sexual excitement”, a jury was told.

The child’s decomposing body was found “meticulously hidden” in the loft of the New Addington house Stuart Hazell shared with Christine Bicknell, on August 10 last year, the Old Bailey was told.

Read our live updates from the Old Bailey today, as they happened in real-time.

Mr Hazell, 37, admits wrapping Tia’s body in sheets and hiding it in bin bags in the loft in The Lindens, the court heard.

The jury was told he claims she fell down the stairs and died in a tragic accident.

But prosecutors say Tia, whose disappearance on August 3 sparked search parties and emotional family appeals, was killed as part of a depraved sex attack by Mr Hazell.

Andrew Edis QC said: Stuart Hazell had a sexual attraction to Tia Sharp.

“There was some form of sexual assault or something of that kind. That was the reason he killed her. Accident had nothing to do with it.”

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A jury at the Old Bailey was shown a photograph of a naked young girl, alleged by the prosecution to be Tia, lying on a bloodstained bed.

Mr Edis said a pathologist who studied the photo, which was found on a memory stick in Mr Hazell's house and was taken on the night Tia died, believed the girl pictured was dead.

There were gasps in court when the photo was shown.

The court heard a sex toy covered in Tia’s blood was found in the house, while Mr Hazell’s semen was discovered on the bed sheets and pillow case in Tia’s room at the home.

Hazell also allegedly visited internet sites popular with paedophiles and searched for terms including “naked little girlies” and “schoolgirl nudes”.

He is said to have visited a website about incest on August 6 last year — three days after he allegedly killed Tia and while her body was lying hidden in the loft.

During an emotional hearing at the Old Bailey, attended by Tia’s mother Natalie and her father Stephen Carter, the jury was told how police twice searched Mr Hazell’s loft and failed to find the body, only discovering it when they were alerted by its smell.

The court was played a television interview, recorded the day before Tia was found, in which Mr Hazell described the Raynes Park High Pupil as “a happy-go-lucky golden angel”, and strenuously denied any involvement in her disappearance.

He said: “I know deep down in my heart that she walked out of my house.”

But Tia’s body was lying, tightly packaged with sticking tape, in Mr Hazell’s loft.

It was so badly decomposed that a cause of death was never established, but a pathologist said suffocation was most likely.

The court heard police found two memory sticks in Mr Hazell’s house, containing 11 photographs and two videos of Tia sleeping, as well as a “secretly filmed” video of her bare legs.

A bag containing Tia’s belongings was found wrapped up in the loft alongside her body.

Tia’s family members wept as Mr Edis revealed details of her death, with her distraught mother Natalie shouting, “I hope you rot” at Mr Hazell as she left the court in tears.

The court heard that after his arrest Mr Hazell had told prison guards Tia had fallen down the stairs and “broken her neck”.

He is said to have told them: “I didn’t know what to do so I wrapped her up and put her in the loft.”

Mr Edis told the jury: “You are having to decide if this was murder or an accident but what you know is that after she died he put her in the loft.

“Now that is not what you would normally do after someone suffered an accident.

“Generally speaking you call an ambulance.”

The trial, expected to last three weeks, continues.