A 45-year-old man who molested girls while carrying out community service at a Kent school has been jailed for two years.

Maidstone Crown Court heard that Andrew Marsh could not resist fondling two pupils while he was supposed to be listening to them read.

He had been accused of committing similar offences with three other girls, aged eight and nine, but was acquitted of those charges.

Marsh had been given a 200-hour community punishment order for deception in October 2002 by Judge Warwick McKinnon, the same judge who sentenced him for the latest offences.

He was placed at the school, in Ashford, with the agreement of the head teacher and assistance of the probation service.

Trevor Wright, prosecuting, said one of the girls told her mother in April last year that Marsh had touched her at least four times over her clothing and asked inappropriate questions about boyfriends and kissing.

The education department was contacted and Marsh was immediately withdrawn from the school, which cannot be named for legal reasons.

Several days later another girl approached a teacher and claimed that Marsh had also touched her several times.

The other girls did not make complaints until January this year. It was in respect of those that he was found not guilty.

Victims described how Marsh would stroke the girls' legs. If they moved their chair away, he would also move with them.

One victim, now aged 10, said: "The reading teacher kept touching our legs and when we moved over, he moved too. We started to read and he would touch our legs and stroke them up and down.

"It started a few days after hearing me read. He didn't say anything and I just kept on reading."

One of the other girls said she complained to a teacher about what was happening but she was told it was her imagination. The teacher told another girl she had been watching too much news, she said.

"I told her one of the teachers had been touching our legs," she said. "It happened to me three times and then I told. It happened more afterwards because the teacher didn't believe us."

Marsh, of Bybrook Road, Ashford, denied 10 charges of indecent assault, two involving each girl.

Asked if he indecently assaulted any of the girls, he said: "I did not. Not at any time."

Roger Offenbach, defending, told the judge: "I have to accept that an aggravating feature of the offences is that they were committed while he was undergoing community service."

Mr Offenbach said of an order banning Marsh from working with youngsters: "He is unlikely to work with children again in any event, so it is no additional hardship to him."

He added: "For a family man this is an awful offence to be convicted of. I ask for as lenient a sentence as you can in the circumstances."

Judge McKinnon told Marsh: "Touching up is described in the course of repeated conduct by you over a number of weeks when placed in a position of trust in the school as a reading assistant.

"The offences were committed when carrying out a sentence passed, in fact, by me of community punishment. That is an additional aggravating feature.

"You contested the case, so those two little girls had to give evidence. You are still in a state of denial. According to the probation service you are at a high risk of re-offending."

Ordering that Marsh sign the sex offenders' register for 10 years, the judge added: "I express the hope that given the time you will have to serve of this sentence, you will reflect on the offences that you have been convicted of and come out of your state of denial and seek help.

"There will be help for you in prison if you choose to seek it out."