A youth who had sex with a 12-year-old girl in Potters Bar has been spared jail.

Sunny Booth, who was 17 at the time, told St Albans Crown Court he thought the victim was 15.

Now 18, he was given a suspended sentence on Friday.

It happened on September 7 last year, when Booth lived at the South Mimms Traveller Site.

The youth, who was with two others, met the 12-year-old and her friends in Parkfield Park, where they played spin the bottle.

Prosecutor Ann Evans said they walked off together and started having sex by a log.

She told him it hurt and he stopped.

He then persuaded her to give him oral sex. He also took an indecent photograph of the girl.

Booth, who now lives in Suffolk, pleaded guilty to two counts of causing a child to engage in sexual activity and one of taking an indecent photo of a child.

Paul Donegon, defending, said the defendant was a “polite, respectable young man” who did not blame anyone but himself.

He said others in the park heard the girl to say she was aged 15.

Judge Andrew Bright QC told him: “I accept she appeared to

be consenting.

“It was still plain she was an underage girl who you were not allowed to have sexual intercourse with.”

He passed a nine month jail sentence, suspended for two years.

The judge made a Sexual Harm Prevention Order banning Booth from have unsupervised access to girls under 16 for five years and ordered him to sign on the Sex Offender Register for five years.