A DONEGAL man has been jailed for one year after being convicted of child sex offences in Britain.

Jerome Brennan from Manorcunningham was also placed on the Sex Offenders Register for one decade and banned from unsupervised contact with children for seven years. The sentence was handed down by Teeside court on Monday.

The 49 year-old was found guilty of grooming a teenager over the internet for sex. He contacted the 15 year-old girl online and posed as a British modelling agent offering her "good money" to pose for his Marbella-based company. She gave Brennan her number after he offered her a job through an email. Under the pseudonyms 'Amy' and 'Lou', he began texting her messages and she eventually agreed to meet up with him at a local pub. However, she fled the scene after she saw Brennan turn up in a battered old car. Her father then contacted the police after seeing Brennan's messages on her mobile and he was arrested in November whilst trying to withdraw money under a false name. After his arrest, he suffered a breakdown and took an overdose.

On Monday, Judge Thomas Moorehouse told Teeside Crown Court that the case's evidence sent out a clear warning to young men and women who go on internet chatrooms and communicate with people they don't know. He told Brennan, "I take the view that young people have to be protected from people like you. If you chose to go on the internet and contact young people it's posing a severe risk. I hope the sentence I pass will go out as a warning to other people not to go on the internet and follow your behaviour".

Brennan owned a string of 'Le Chic' lapdance clubs in Ireland, as well as 'The Movie Star Cafe' in Belfast, which was closed down after being raided by the Immigration Department in 2002.