A YOUTH cricket coach who had sex on the back seat of his car with a 15-year-old girl he met on Facebook has walked free from court.

Ben Lawrance carried out 'grooming like behaviour' on the naive and vulnerable child from Marlborough as he pressurised her into meeting him for the illicit liaison in the town's High Street.

But after hearing the 25-year-old was immature for his age and likely to be bullied in prison a judge imposed a community order.

Hannah Squire, prosecuting, told how Lawrance groomed his victim after meeting her through a former girlfriend on the social networking site.

At first they were involved in a group chat which became private messaging where it turned into talk about sex.

They were each aware of the other's age but he started asking her to send him indecent pictures of herself, and he sent her one of him naked from the neck down.

He also repeatedly told her what he would do her when they met up and Miss Squire said as she went along with the chat felt compelled to meet up with him.

"Clearly she is naive and vulnerable and he is going along with that," she told the court.

"That really is the element of grooming. For a 15-year-old girl 25 years old can seem some way in the distance."

She said they finally met up for the first time on Friday, January 16, when he picked her up outside a shop in Marlborough High Street at 7pm.

"You must remember this was the first time she had come face to face with the defendant," she said.

"He drove away towards Pewsey, stopped in a lay-by, got in to the back seat of the car then sexual intercourse followed.

"When it finished he agreed to drop her by her house, which he did. There was some messaging after telling her he enjoyed it and wanted to see her again"

But over the following days she realised what she had done was wrong and told her mum who called the police.

Lawrance, of Enborne Street, Enborne, near Newbury, pleaded guilty to one charge of sexual activity with a child when he appeared at Swindon Crown Court.

Steven Molloy, defending, said that his client had a below average IQ which had been identified when he was at school.

He said that in the immediate aftermath of the meeting the victim was still communicating with him online.

"Although this girl may have regretted it after and told her mother, and that is why there is an age of consent, at the time the messages clearly showed this was a two way conversation," he said.

Since leaving school he said his client had worked as a stable hand for a horse breeder and was also a youth coach at East Woodhay Cricket Club.

His boss, Julie Read and chairman of the cricket club John King both gave character references saying he was a hard working but unsophisticated man.

Passing sentence Judge Peter Blair QC said: "The law is there to protect young people against pressure being brought to bear upon them but also to protect them from themselves.

"Because it is only too easy for someone to be pressed for one thing, that leads to another, that leads to another, and regret that for a lifetime after.

"This young lady will have for the rest of her life on her memory the events that you caused in January this year as being a significant moment in her life that she will regret for ever. For that you deserve to be severely punished.

"The likely consequences of you being in custody, being a vulnerable young man and being severely bullied, means that actually the justice of the case allows me to not send you to prison directly today. I have thought long and hard about whether I am doing the wrong thing by the public.

"You certainly did put some pressure on her in grooming like behaviour to take some pictures of herself and send to you on Facebook."

He imposed a three year community order with 200 hours of unpaid work, a sex offender programme, and banned him from unsupervised contact with girls under 16 for 15 years.