A footballer has been jailed for sending explicit pictures and messages to a 14-year-old girl.
Leroy Robinson, 34, played for Aston Villa and West Bromwich Albion as a youngster but turned to drugs and booze after his football dream died.
Prosecutor Simon Burch said Robinson struck up a friendship with the girl in the summer of 2018.
He said Robinson got her phone number and they began exchanging messages which turned sexual.
He said: “He asked her to perform sexual acts on him. He also sent her graphic pictures of himself and asked her to do the same.”
But the girl’s mother became suspicious and looked at her phone. She called the police and he was arrested.
The girl was interviewed and said she had enjoyed the defendant’s attention at first as he was an older man but she had never had a boyfriend.
“She became uncomfortable after he started sending her messages of a sexual nature. Her mother was distraught after finding out and she said she hated to see the effect it had on her.”
The girl suffers from anxiety now due to the incident and can’t sleep well. She no longer wanted to stay over at the houses of her friends and wanted to be with her mother all the time.
Robinson, of Green Hill Way, Shirley, appeared in court on Tuesday to be sentenced for a charge of engaging in sexual communication with a child. He also pleaded guilty to a charge of robbery and was jailed for a total of 40 months.
