A JURY has taken just over two hours to find a Dinas Powys man guilty of 11 charges relating to grooming and having sex with an underage girl.

Sixty-year-old Paul Sleeman was found guilty of eight charges of sexual activity with a child, two counts of having sex with a child and one count of abduction all relating to the same 14-year-old girl.

Over the course of a seven day trial Cardiff Court Court heard how Sleeman, of Dunraven Close, Dinas Powys had met the girl through a Vale of Glamorgan sports club.

The jury were read texts and Facebook messages between the pair in which Sleeman began, as Prosecutor Heath Edwards described it, "flirting like a teenager" with the girl.

Mr Edwards told the court that Sleeman began trying to make himself a crucial and important part of the girl's life as time went on, often driving her home to Rhondda Cynon Taff, taking her out for food and making frequent trips to visit her at school. The teenager also began missing days at school in order to spend time with courier Sleeman, accompanying him as he worked in his van.

The relationship came to light when teachers, suspicious of a forged absence note, called the contact number provided by the girl only to get hold of Sleeman rather than a parent. During police interviews the girl initially denied that anything untoward had happened between them but eventually explained how Sleeman had began his grooming by kissing and touching her in his van.

She told police that this behaviour eventually led to Sleeman twice coercing her into having sex in the back of his van, which he had driven to an isolated country lane.

During the trial Sleeman had denied any of the charges against him, maintaining that the relationship was merely a friendship.

Having deliberated for just two hours and 15 minutes the jury returned unanimous guilty verdicts on all 11 charges against Sleeman who will be sentenced next month.