A SEX offender who got a girl to make pornographic photos of herself and send them to him has been jailed.

Paul Cleasby, prosecuting, said the 13-year-old girl initially refused to do as Tobias Robert Tobin asked her, but after he repeatedly pressed her, agreed to send him 15 photographs, one of which police later categorized as at the highest but one level on the scale used to assess illegal sexual pictures of children. The pictures were for his own use.

Detectives also found evidence on his home computer that he had been looking for extreme pornographic images and going on websites with sexual images of children.

Teesside Crown Court heard the girl had had sexual experiences with other men as well as Tobin and as a result now had mental health problems.

Tobin, of Woodhill View, Wetherby, pleaded guilty to one charge of inciting a child to perform a sex act, one of involving a child in porngraphy, and three charges of possesing sexual images of children.

He was jailed for 15-months, made subject to a sexual offences prevention order restricting his use of the internet and put on the sex offenders’ register, both for ten years, and banned from working with children.

The Recorder of York, Judge Stephen Ashurst, said Tobin bore some of the responsibility for the girl’s current state. He also said: “It is clear these requests you made were for your sexual benefit. You had, for whatever reason developed an interest in child pornography.”

Mark Thompson, defending, said Tobin had only contacted the girl online and had never met her. The period when he had exchanged sexual text messages was effectively limited to a two-week period in January 2012 when he had been 21.

He was a “very immature” young man who was isolated socially, but was a hard-working man from a decent family.