The teenage prostitute who set up her bank manager client to be robbed at knifepoint and locked for five hours in his car boot was led from the dock in tears today after a judge jailed her for two years.

Judge Jonathan Crabtree told Joanne Crossman, 18, that had she been a little older he would have had no hesitation in locking her up for four years.

But because she was only 17 at the time of the offences, he was restrained by the law.

"You are a prostitute who set up one of your customers to be kidnapped and robbed. The young men who were going to do it were your boyfriend and one of his friends whom you knew," the judge told her at York Crown Court.

"You knew both of these young men. You knew they had been in prison. You must have known that they were violent. You knew they were taking a carving knife with them. You must have known they were going to treat this man to say the least badly."

The judge added: "All you had to do after they had set out was to telephone this man and tell him to get out of the way. You did not do this and you were hoping to get money out of it."

Crossman of Starkey Crescent, York, was led down to the cells in tears.

She has an 18-month-old daughter, York Crown Court heard.

At an earlier hearing she had admitted robbery and false imprisonment.

Prosecuting, Martin Rudland said that Crossman had received money for sex with her client in January 1998.

In March she telephoned him again to arrange a meeting. When she met the man, who comes from outside York, she seemed agitated and asked for money to pay off a pressing debt, arranging to meet him shortly afterwards.

She then telephoned him to say she would be slightly late.

When her client checked the messages on his mobile phone he found it had recorded her last call and continued to record a conversation she had with Kevin Joseph Castle and Jason Francis Smith in which they planned to rob him.

Despite his precautions the two young men found him, robbed him at knifepoint, took money from a cash machine using his bank card and imprisoned him in his car boot.

He was not released until some five hours later.

The judge said he had no doubt the three of them had hoped that because the bank man was meeting a prostitute he would be too ashamed to report the robbery.

On Monday he jailed Castle, 22, formerly of Alma Terrace, York, for seven years and Smith, 21, of Drake's House, Woolnough Avenue, Tang Hall, York, for five.

Mr Rudland said that Crossman had given a statement to the police and should have given evidence against Castle but did not appear at court.

Mitigating for Crossman, Simon Kealey said her life was in a mess. She had been involved in three potentially damaging situations and had started prostitution when she was 16.

She had come under the influence of a violent pimp who was not her boyfriend, Smith, but who had been involved with her shortly before the offences.

Earlier, Mr Rudland had said police had doubts whether the pimp existed.

Mr Kealey said Crossman had no idea how things had gone wrong and she was hoping to move out of York, where she had come into bad company.

Threats had been made to her about her involvement in the court case and her co-accused had scrawled graffiti about her on the cell walls below York Crown Court. She found this threatening.

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