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A sex offender who moved a 17-year-old girl into her home has been spared jail despite her previous offences.

Lana Laws, 30, who was previously known as Ben but now identifies as a woman, was found to have broken a court orders by having a relationship with the teenager.

Transgender Laws was also found to have broken three other court orders, has previous convictions for a sexual offence and possessing indecent images of children.

Today (January 4) Canterbury Crown Court heard Laws had moved the teenager into her home in Albert Court, York Street, Ramsgate.

The accountant was given a nine-month suspended prison sentence - despite it being the fourth breach of an order issued in 2011 for downloading indecent images of children.

Police visited Laws in February last year where they discovered she was living as a woman and had moved a 17-year-old girl into her home.

Prosecutor Steven Mould said: “She said they were in a relationship and had met through a dating website.

“But accepts that she made no effort to notify the authorities. This is the fourth breach of the order.”

The court heard that Laws’s “contact” sexual offence dated back to 2004.

'The defendant had an appalling childhood'

Previous breaches were for failing to register a change of address and twice being in possession of a mobile phone with Internet access.

John Barker, defending, said Laws’s partner was now 18 and would have attended the court hearing had she not been attending a funeral.

He said: “The defendant had an appalling childhood, but has since done the best she can to help herself.

“Today she is asking for a second chance.”

Judge James O’Mahony accepted that Laws had an "awful childhood" during which she had been “exposed to extreme sexual behaviour by others”.

He said: “This is your fourth breach. If it is understood that people can continuously breach court orders without consequence, they will lose their effect.”

Laws admitted the breach. As well as the suspended sentence, she was ordered to do 20 days rehab and 100 hours unpaid work.