By Staff Reporter

Last updated at 11:43, Tuesday, 12 March 2013

The former manager of a fish and chip shop is trying to persuade a court to lift some of the stringent conditions imposed on him after he was convicted of sex offences against a teenage schoolgirl.

Applied: Michael Christie

Michael John Christie, 45, was given a four-and-a-half year prison sentence and put on the sex offenders’ register indefinitely in July 2010 after being found guilty of having a three-year sexual relationship with the girl.

At the same time he was also banned indefinitely from having unsupervised contact with children.

The former part-time fireman is now out on licence, having served half his sentence in prison, and is applying to have the ban on meeting children lifted because it interferes too much with the new life he is trying to build in the West Midlands.

When he appeared at Carlisle Crown Court, Christie, who managed a fish and chop shop in Penrith, spoke only to confirm his name.

But prosecuting barrister Tim Evans said the conditions might be considered unnecessary because Christie was “pursuing an altogether different career”.

The case was adjourned until April 12 to allow Susan Kidd, of the West Midlands Police Public Protection Unit – whose job it would be to monitor Christie’s activities in the future – more time to investigate the proposals and, possibly, to agree on how the conditions imposed by the court might be amended.

During the trial in May 2010 the court heard how Christie began seducing the girl when she was just 13.

He first had sex with her when she was 14 and went on doing so until she was 17 and mature enough to realise their relationship, which he told her was true love, had no future.

The girl, who is now grown up, told the jury that she frequently bunked off school to have sex with him at his home, in his chip shop or in his car during trips to the countryside and that he liked to film her as she performed sex acts with him.

She only told the police years later after he refused to give back compromising photographs he had taken of her partially clothed.

Christie, who gave up the chip shop in 2007 to become a driving instructor, claimed her allegations were all false and just the result of her “fantasising”.

But he was found guilty of three charges of indecently assaulting the girl when she was 13 and six of sexual activity with her when she was 14 or 15.

Some of those charges were just specimens to reflect his pattern of alleged behaviour in that time.

First published at 11:38, Tuesday, 12 March 2013
Published by http://www.newsandstar.co.uk