A MAN who groomed a 13-year-old schoolgirl for future sex frolics has been jailed for two years at Worcester Crown Court under new laws designed to protect youngsters.

Claudio Alberone labelled the victim "sexy babe" in a flurry of text phone messages and groped her bottom at a meeting outside Kidderminster Town Hall.

A jury retired for only 30 minutes before convicting the 46-year-old pervert of sexual grooming and sexual activity with a child.

Judge David McEvoy QC told him: "You lost your self control and arranged to meet her with the purpose of having sex.

"The age of the girl was so damning. For a time she thought you were only 16."

The judge made an order banning Alberone, of Cathedral Avenue, Habberley estate, Kidderminster, from associating with children under 17 outside his family for 15 years.

They cannot enter his home, garden or car and he cannot communicate with them by electronic means.

A breach of the order, made under the Sexual Offences Act 2003, can bring a jail sentence of up to five years.

Alberone was tempted after receiving up to 50 text messages a day in August last year.

Both he and the girl boasted of their sexual experience in calls but the defendant was beaten up in revenge by a relative of the victim and branded a paedophile by the girl's friends at another meeting in a park.

He claimed he was only trying to patch up a broken love affair between the girl and a friend of his, aged 14.

Divorced father-of-four and grandfather Alberone lent the friend his mobile to phone her and later retrieved her number stored in the phone memory.

Prosecutor John Attwood told the jury: "This was not a well-intentioned man playing Cupid. He entertained kinky thoughts."

Alberone had not set out on a plan of campaign to snare the girl, insisted his counsel Richard Carron.

"He made errors of judgement and got carried away by the texts," he added.

"Through an abberation of his mind he has lost all his good character."