A MAN who contacted two teenage girls over the internet and sent them sexual messages was caught when they raised the alarm, York Crown Court heard.

John Gregg, prosecuting, said Philip Doughty, 60, tried to contact both girls through Facebook.

But the younger, aged 15, turned him down, and when he tried similar tactics with a 17-year-old girl, she alerted the authorities.

Recorder Jamie Hill QC told Doughty: “I don’t know how far your behaviour might have gone if the 15-year-old girl hadn’t been so sensible and stopped engaging with you when she realised something was amiss.

“How richly you deserve to go to prison.”

But he suspended the six-month prison sentence for two years so that Doughty could go on a sex offender treatment programme and look after his wife.

He will also be supervised by the probation service for two years, placed on the sex offenders’ register for seven years during which he will be monitored by the police and subject to a sexual offences prevention order restricting his use of the internet and contact with children for five years.

Doughty, of Victoria Way, Huntington, pleaded guilty to inciting the 15-year-old girl to perform a sexual act.

Julian Tanikal, defending at York Crown Court, said Doughty realised what he had done was wrong.

He had been having money problems at the time, the benefits agency had told him his benefits would be stopped and he was drinking heavily.

His wife was disabled and would suffer if Doughty was jailed because he was her primary carer.

Mr Gregg said Doughty made friend requests to both girls through Facebook.

He started contacting the younger girl on December 12.

On January 3, he asked what she was doing and who she was with. When she said she was watching television with her father, he didn’t reply.

But when she told him she was watching television alone in reply to a similar message on January 10, he began a series of sexual messages until she stopped replying, and on January 17, she declined his invitation to a “private chat”.

Doughty then turned his attentions to the older girl.