A YORK man who had sex with a 15-year-old girl during a weekend to Scarborough has been jailed for a year.

Adrian Strong, prosecuting, said the seaside trip was only one occasion during the couple's ten-month affair when they made love.

Robert Michael Gray, 24, had repeated sex with the girl, including occasions in his flat and in his car.

The girl's family were frequently away from home caring for a sick relative. But then her father learned she had deceived him when she claimed she had spent a weekend with friends.

Instead, she had been sharing a double bed with Gray in a Scarborough hotel.

Gray had initially claimed to police that their relationship was strictly platonic. But when medical evidence revealed the couple had had sex, he made a partial confession.

Gray, of Brailsford Crescent, Clifton, pleaded guilty to three charges of having unlawful sex with a girl aged under 16.

"Sometimes 15-year-old girls have to be protected from their own desires," the Honorary Recorder of York, Judge Paul Hoffman, told Gray at York Crown Court: "You are significantly older than she."

He jailed Gray for 12 months and put him on the sex offenders' register for ten years.

Geoff Parsons, for Gray, said he accepted he had behaved wrongly both in a moral and a legal sense. The relationship had begun innocently, but despite his misgivings had grown into a sexual one.

At the time, said the barrister, Gray had been having difficulties with his partner, who was pregnant. She was now likely to refuse to allow him any contact with their child.

Prison would cost him his job and his home.

Updated: 09:32 Saturday, May 24, 2003