An Ashford teaching assistant – who posed as a girl and tricked youngsters into performing sex acts on the Internet – has been jailed for two years.

Robert Iles, of Magpie Hall Road, Stubbs Cross, has since left his sports position at Great Chart Primary after being arrested in April last year.

His barrister, Paul Hogben told Canterbury Crown Court that Iles was “younger than his years” and would be bullied in prison.

But the judge told the 23-year-old to "find a backbone" inside jail and stand up to the bullies.

"You must serve the sentence and I hope you get some backbone and stick up for yourself and make sure you are not bullied” - Judge James O’Mahony

Mr Hogben said Iles had been planning a career teaching sports but now that lay in ruins.

Mr Hogben pleaded for “a last chance” and asked that the jail sentence be suspended so he could “confront the behavioural problems which underpin these offences.”

He added: “Because he is a vulnerable person and, as he says, because of the way he looks, people can tell he is easy prey inside jail.

Mr Hogben said: “He is still very young and this is the crises of his life. He has lost his career as he hoped to have life in sports and that is now at an end forever.”

The court had heard how Iles had contacted two 12-year-olds and a 15-year-old via his Internet webcam posing as a girl.

But Judge James O’Mahony told Iles, who admitted three sex offences: “I acknowledge the problems you have had and that you have been bullied badly at school and I know that would be miserable.

“I am sorry for that, especially being bullied at school but the other side of the coin is the fact that you were in a position of trust as a teaching sports assistant.

“And this wasn’t a momentary and isolated offence because you set up a deceptive plan, a contrived identity seeking to trap boys who were wanting pictures of girls.”

The judge said he then got sexual gratification by getting the youngsters to perform via the webcam.

Iles, who was also given a 10 year Sex Offences Prevention Order, was jailed for two years and the judge told him:

“I am very sorry but you must serve the sentence and I hope you get some backbone and stick up for yourself and make sure you are not bullied.”