A FIRE brigade union official who bombarded a girl with explicit text messages has walked free from court.

Paul Ahmed, 45, was spared jail despite being told by a judge: "You turned this girl from innocence into something very different."

Ahmed was cleared of four serious sex charges against the 14-year-old, who told a trial last month that she had an affair with him.

Jurors at Newcastle Crown Court found the South Tyneside Fire Brig-ades Union branch secretary guilty of one charge of indecency with a child.

The charge relates to Ahmed sending messages that were designed to encourage her to behave in an indecent way.

Judge Michael Taylor described the texts as prolonged and torrid, and said the offences deserved custody.

But he said a three-year community rehabilitation order, in which Ahmed would have to complete "demanding" sessions with offender groups and probation officials, would be better than a sentence of nine to 12 months in prison.

Ahmed, who appeared yesterday at Teesside Crown Court to be sentenced, was also placed on the sex offenders' register for five years.

The court heard that his wife has left him, that he lost his house and faces being dismissed after 25 years as a firefighter.

Jamie Hill, in mitigation, said the stigma attached to publicity surrounding the case should not be underestimated, and urged the judge to show leniency because of Ahmed's previous positive character.

Mr Hill said: "He has truly suffered for what he has done. He has been publicly humiliated in just about every way imaginable."

Judge Taylor told Ahmed: "The text messages were in the most graphic terms.

"It was totally inappropriate behaviour between an adult and an impressionable young adolescent. You derived pleasure from it."

At last month's trial, the teenager said she sexually experimented with Ahmed, of Carnegie Close, South Shields, South Tyneside, during secret meetings and that she had full sex with him when he took her to his home.

The girl, who said she was infatuated with him, wrote down the text messages in a book that was handed to police after she told her family about the alleged relationship.

Jurors rejected the girl's claims there had been physical contact between them, and found Ahmed not guilty of two charges of indecent assault, indecency with a child, and an attempted unnatural act, all between April and June 2003.