TWO teenage girls who used sweets to entice a toddler away from her mother in a busy city centre store had “evil intent” a judge said.

Mr Justice Globe sentenced the girls, aged 13 and 14, to three years and three months detention for the offence against the two-year-old child at Newcastle’s Primark store.

Sitting at the city’s Crown Court, the judge told them the toddler was at risk of physical or sexual violence and exploitation during the incident in April after hearing of internet searches made on the younger girl’s tablet computer that showed increasing levels of violence.

Out of a total of 1,185 searches, 402 were pornographic – with troubling material, such as children having sex, rape, torment, slavery and abduction and one referring to “dragged into a van and raped”.

The court was told the toddler was found unharmed with the girls half an hour later, in a park three miles away from the store after a massive police search.

The judge, who was junior prosecution counsel in the notorious trial of Liverpool toddler James Bulger’s killers, Jon Venables and Robert Thompson, said: “The fact there was no actual harm in those two hours does not mean that, in one way or the other, she wasn’t going to suffer harm eventually.

“The only mitigation was that the good fortune of the police finding her before any actual harm took place.”

The court was told the kidnappers had skipped school and spent hours in the Primark in Northumberland Street, waiting for a child to abduct.

They had already approached two others and almost tricked the mother of one of them when they tried to lead her daughter away.

They had been playing with their eventual victim for 15 minutes in a display the mother described as “sweet” before they lured her away.

“They offered her sweets,” Sarah Barlow, prosecuting said. “That’s indicative of the level of planning, they had taken with them things likely to attract a child to them.

“They were playing with her. [The toddler] was running to and from the girls.

“Her mother was not suspicious, she simply thought the girls were playing with her daughter and were being quite sweet. This went on for some 15 minutes.”

The teenagers later gave conflicting accounts of being asked by a man to take a child, but the prosecution said there was no evidence to substantiate these claims.

The court was told, however, that the younger of two girls was groomed and sexually exploited by an unknown man who messaged her tablet computer using the ooVoo app.

Referring to the internet searches, the judge said: “There were increasing amounts of physical violence, sexual violence, references to exploitation and slavery, torment and abduction.

“When that is put alongside everything that actually happened and your actions since, it convinces me that the material influenced your thinking and your decision making and your intentions.

“I am driven to the conclusion that the toddler’s mother’s fears about what might have happened are wellfounded.

In my judgement, forseeable harm to her was serious harm.”

Andrew Walker, for the older girl, said she had a “natural affection” for children, while Julie Clemitson, representing the younger girl, said her client had shown the toddler “nothing but kindness”.

Reacting to the sentence, the toddler’s father said: “I think it [the sentence] is right. From my point of view, I am thankful to the police and public who helped to find her as quickly as they did.

“I hope the sentence is long enough for them to reflect on their offences and to make them safe around children in the future.”

The girls had pleaded guilty at a previous hearing to a charge of kidnap and shoplifting.

The judge declined to lift an order preventing the defendants from being named.