A Bradford man who as a teenager had sex with an underage girl and secretly made indecent images of her has been spared jail.

Some of the pictures and videos made by Alex Keleher, now 22, were then posted online.

Prosecutor Richard Woolfall told Bradford Crown Court that Keleher’s offending took place between 2012 and 2013, a period up to him turning 18 years old.

He said that Keleher would make contact with girls online before having consensual sexual encounters with them.

He told the court that when he was 16, Keleher met a younger teenage girl through the Tagged website and later had sex with her.

Keleher secretly filmed the girl performing oral sex on him. Keleher told the girl he would delete the footage, but it later ended up online.

The court heard that Keleher secretly filmed another girl, who he began seeing when he was 18, while the pair shared a shower together.

Keleher, of Apperley Road, Idle, Bradford, pleaded guilty to two charges of sexual activity with a child and three offences of making indecent images of children. On his arrest in March 2014, police examined his computer and recovered various files, including footage of him having sex with another girl whose name Keleher said he “couldn’t remember.”

He said he was aware some of the images had got onto the internet, but denied he was responsible, claiming “things had been weird with his computer.”

Mr Woolfall said there was insufficient evidence to prove it was Keleher who had uploaded the content.

Gillian Batts, mitigating, said her client had intellectual difficulties, with no “predatory” tendencies identified by the probation service. A report said Keleher had not committed any further offences in the past four years, and supported a community disposal, accompanied by a “stringent” Sexual Harm Prevention Order (SHPO).

Addressing Miss Batts and the behaviour of her client, the Recorder of Bradford, Judge Jonathan Durham Hall QC, said: “He knows now, and the public know, that it is wrong, very wrong. Nobody should take a photograph of another person when they don’t want it. All the arguments are in favour, however hesitant I am, of the disposal by the probation service.

“I am going to impose a community order, I have no alternative. If I sent him to prison, you would appeal, and you would win.”

Keleher was given a two-year community order, alongside a five-year SHPO, and ordered to complete a sex offenders treatment programme, a two-year supervision order, and 200 hours of unpaid work.