A high school teacher with a ‘leggings fetish’ engaged in online sex activity with an undercover officer he believed was a 12-year-old girl, a court heard.

Robert James Lindsay, from Accrington, used the online live chat application Kik and later Skype to ‘groom’ a person he believed to be a young girl called ‘Ruby’ over two weeks.

Prosecutor Bob Elias told Burnley Crown Court how the science teacher sent two videos of himself performing a sex act and said he was ‘thinking about ways to make her blush’.

The 34-year-old repeatedly told Ruby that he loved leggings, wanted to see her wearing leggings and said they could play a game of ‘truth or dare’.

Dad-of-two Lindsay also told Ruby that he couldn’t show his face because ‘he would get into trouble because she was 12’.

Officers raided his Accrington home on July 28 last year and seized a laptop which also contained indecent images of girls as young as nine performing sex acts on adults.

Mr Elias told the court: “Any parent of a school age child will hear with dismay of the breach of trust which this sort of offence by a school teacher necessitates.

“They would now be concerned that someone in that respected profession had done this.”

Lindsay, now of Preston, pleaded guilty to attempting to cause a child to watch sexual activity, attempting to cause or incite a child to engage in sexual activity and three counts of making indecent photographs of children.

He was given a two-year jail sentence, suspended for two years with a sex offender treatment programme requirement, 200 hours unpaid work and a 10-year sexual harm prevention order.

He was ordered to pay costs of £1,000 and made sign the sex offenders register.

Daniel Prowse, defending, said it was not a breach of trust case and there is ‘no suggestion at all of an offending against any child.

He said: “[It was] a job that he was passionate about.

“Now his marriage has ended and he has lost his teaching career.

“The effect on him is really significant. He has taken great steps to understand why he has committed these offences.

It did take Mr Lindsay time to come to terms with what he has done.”