A MARRIED father who had an affair with a schoolgirl was jailed for two-and-a-half years yesterday, as his wife sobbed yards away from him in court.

Gary Pollard stood shaking in the dock with his eyes closed as a judge said: “This is an extremely serious case for which custody is the only sentence.”

Judge Peter Armstrong told the 40-year-old – an IT consultant with a Darlington company – he had behaved in an appalling way with the teenager.

But he said shamed Pollard deserved considerable credit for admitting his crimes and sparing his victim the ordeal of having to give evidence during a trial.

Teesside Crown Court was told Pollard initially made denials when the girl’s mother contacted police after finding explicit messages on her computer.

He later admitted six charges of sexual activity with a child – sometimes in his car on the seafront at Redcar and sometimes at his home.

The girl was said by Pollard’s barrister to have initiated most of what went on.

But Robin Denny, mitigating, told Judge Armstrong, that Pollard “accepted the unsuitability of his behaviour and had not blamed the complainant”.

In an interview with a probation worker, Pollard said: “I should never have allowed myself to cross the boundaries and act in such an appalling way.”

The court heard that contact between the pair was maintained through mobile phone, texting and Facebook, but the girl had not been groomed in that way.

Mr Denny told Judge Armstrong: “He comes here in a terrible state, but with the constant support of his wife, who is in court today.

“He did, at least, plead guilty when the matter came to trial and the complainant did not have the ordeal of having to go into the witness box.

“It can also be said when he was interviewed by the probation officer, he seems to have accepted the unsuitability of his behaviour and not blamed the complainant.”

Pollard was banned from contacting girls on social networking sites or chatrooms and from having unsupervised contact with under-16s.

The court heard that he often worked from his home in Bonnyrigg Close, Ingleby Barwick, as a training consultant for communications firm Tele- Ware.

He was said to have been under strain because of illhealth and the judge accepted his crimes were “wholly out of character”.