AN international karate champion planned to leave his wife for the girl with whom he was having an underage sexual relationship, York Crown Court heard.

Christine Egerton, prosecuting, claimed Liam O’Grady and the 13-year-old girl kissed and carried out other sexual acts together in his house, in a Clifton Moor car park and a men’s toilet.

He told the girl: “It was only illegal if the law knew.” The girl alleged the two had an arrangement that as soon as she turned 16 O’Grady would leave his wife, with whom he argued a lot, for her.

“He said: ‘I am happiest when I am with you,” she claimed in a police video interview played to the jury.

“Did you believe that?” a police officer asked.

“I still do,” the girl replied.

Earlier she had said: “I didn’t like school. I didn’t like not being with him.”

She claimed when they started exchanging text messages, O’Grady originally said he could not do anything with her because of her age. Later, he did not mention her age so much.

O’Grady, 30, of Larchfield, Osbaldwick, denies one charge of meeting a girl following sexual grooming and four of sexual activity with a child.

Miss Egerton alleged on one occasion, when O’Grady and the girl were alone in his house, he took his wedding ring off, asked her to go upstairs and both got undressed, though the girl kept her pants on. He then kissed her all over, as he had said he would in a text message.

O’Grady’s wife, Lisa, got suspicious after she spotted the girl shortly after an alleged sexual encounter in a men’s toilet, said the barrister. He told her there was nothing between him and the girl.

Talking about O’Grady’s police interviews after his arrest, the barrister said: “He said he intended leaving his wife when (the girl) reached 16 and they would start a proper sexual relationship then.”

He claimed sexual texts sent by him to the girl were “merely fantasies” and that nothing improper happened between them.

“He accepted being sexually attracted, but was waiting until she was older,” Miss Egerton said.

The girl alleged she told her friends some of what was happening between the two and showed them some of the text messages they exchanged.

She denied defence suggestions she was “proud” of the relationship and exaggerated its extent to her friends.

Police were contacted after a friend of the girl allegedly told a support worker about what the girl had told her this spring.

• The trial continues.