A MAN who admitted having sex with a 12-year-old girl he met in an internet chat room escaped jail after a judge said that the girl was a “willing participant”.

Michael Barrett, 20, visited the girl twice at her parents’ home and confessed to having unprotected sex on both occasions.

But Barrett, a trainee croupier, walked free from court after the judge was told that the girl had instigated sex with him. The decision prompted outrage yesterday from child protection groups.

Under laws introduced this year, penetrative sex with a child under 13 is classified as rape and carries a maximum life sentence, but the legislation is not retrospective, so Barrett was able to be charged and sentenced only with unlawful sexual intercourse.

Barrett, described as being “younger than his years”, was given a two-year conditional discharge and ordered to sign the Sex Offenders’ Register for two years.

Sentencing at Bristol Crown Court, Judge Michael Roach described it as an “exceptional case”. He said: “It seems to me that while you did what you did, in contrast to many cases, there was no sexual coercion.

“The girl was a willing participant and her family allowed you to stay in their home that night, after which you had second thoughts and you took the view that you had to do something about it and went to the police. I trust you to behave yourself now after the reports I’ve read about you which have been very positive and encouraging. Set yourself straight.”

Barrett, of Bristol, befriended the girl, from Manchester, via an internet chat room and kept in contact by computer and phone. They met in 2002 at a concert in London, when the girl was 12 and Barrett 18.

Julian Howells, for the prosecution, said: “There was contact with her family, the relationship was not deemed inappropriate.”

Yesterday was not the first time Judge Roach has spared a child sex offender jail. Gary Templar, 32, was convicted at Bristol Crown Court in 2003 of indecent assault against an 8-year-old girl. The judge gave him a 90-hour community punishment order.

In February this year Judge Roach sentenced a convicted paedophile, Michael Bolam, 65, of Bath, to a two-year community rehabilitation order after he took three boys to an ice-cream parlour without their parents’ knowledge.

Professor Liz Kelly, of the Child and Women Abuse Studies Unit at London Metropolitan University, said: “It leaves one speechless.”

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