An appeals court yesterday upheld a suspended sentence handed down by a magistrates’ court to a 19-year-old man who got a 13-year-old girl pregnant.

The court, however, revoked an order to pay the victim €25,000 in compensation, arguing that the victim should seek redress in the civil courts.

The name of the man is not being published to protect both the child and the mother who was a minor at the time.

The girl had testified that she got to know the accused in February 2001 and had sex with him in the Fgura football ground a month later.

On the night in question they entered the ground through a hole in the fence and sat on a low wall, where he began to grope her. She told him to stop and he did but he started again soon after.

She said she never really resisted his advances but was a little scared of him, adding that she used to date another boy before the accused but had had no sex with him.

Last March, Magistrate Antonio Micallef Trigona jailed the man for two years suspended for four and ordered him to pay €25,000 in compensation to the victim after he admitted to defiling her and offending public morals. The accused filed an appeal disputing the compensation and insisting that the first court could not have found him guilty as the girl had been corrupted already, meaning she was not a virgin.

Mr Justice Scicluna dismissed his arguments, saying he had made an admission to the facts of the case and a probation officer had ascertained it was the girl’s first sexual experience.

The judge, however, ruled that no order for compensation should be made unless the sum is either agreed or proved, so the victim should seek redress on this matter in the civil courts.