A married man who used a 15-year-old schoolgirl as a sex object has been jailed for 21 months.

Amjid Raj, 31, of Swallow Street, Keighley, pleaded guilty to sexual activity with a child in September 2007.

Prosecutor Timothy Capstick told Bradford Crown Court last Thursday that the offence took place at the girl’s home.

She confided in her school friends and two months later her mother found out and the police were alerted.

In September 2008, Raj was charged with rape but his guilty plea to the less serious offence was accepted by the Crown.

Mr Capstick said Raj was imprisoned for five years in 1999 for supplying class A drugs but he had no record for sex offences.

Stephen Wood, Raj’s barrister, said, although “troubling and serious” it was a single incident and Raj believed the girl was consenting.

The defendant’s wife was standing by him.

Judge Jonathan Durham Hall QC said it was accepted Raj did not intimidate or coerce the teenager but the girl’s family was outraged by what Raj had done and there was a “troubling, serious and somewhat sinister side to the matter”. The judge said Raj treated the child “very much as a sex object”.

Raj has been added to the Sex Offenders’ Register and the judge made a Sexual Offences Prevention Order against him for five years.

He was also disqualified from working with children.

After the case, the girl’s mother said her daughter had been left traumatised by her ordeal.

“She is psychologically damaged. She is in a mess at the moment,” said the mother, who cannot be named for legal reasons.

“I think what he did was vile.

“My family is disgusted, both with his actions and the short sentence he received.”