PROSTITUTE Carina Matysiak has been let off paying fines and court costs totalling £220 by town justices.

The 23-year-old, one of many vice girls who have persistently plagued the Broad Street area of town, failed to pay the penalties imposed almost two years ago.

But when she appeared before magistrates after being in custody, chairman of the bench David Rogers told her she didn't have to pay them.

Matysiak, of Axbridge Close, Park South, was fined £100 with £55 costs in March 2002 after being convicted of soliciting for prostitution, and paid just £35 of the penalty.

One month later she was back before the bench when she was again fined £100 for a similar offence.

Since then she has paid no more money and was arrested on a warrant. She could have been sent to jail for non-payment of the fines.

Rob Ross, defending, said his client had been before the court the previous day and was given a conditional discharge for other offences, but the unpaid fines had not been dealt with.

"I am rather disgruntled on her behalf," he told the court. "She left thinking everything had been done and dusted."

He said she had been jailed both last year and this year after the fines had been imposed and she could have lodged them meaning they would have been wiped out in lieu of the time she spent behind bars.

Telling her she didn't have to pay, JP Mr Rogers said: "We will remit on the assumption they should have been lodged."

Matysiak has a record for prostitution and drug addiction going back a number of years.

Her list of previous convictions is littered with offences of prostitution and drug related matters.

In December 2002 she was put on a drug treatment and testing order after being convicted of blackmail by a jury at crown court.

She was also one of a handful of girls against whom the borough council successfully obtained court orders banning them from working in the Broad Street/Manchester Road area of town. However, she has twice been jailed for continually breaching the order.

In January this year, Judge John McNaught jailed her for two months after he heard she had been spotted in the area 32 times in a four-month period late last year.

That sentence came just eight months after she was jailed for a similar breach of the order.

Giles Sheldrick