A man was sentenced to three years probation and 240 hours community service for not telling his girlfriend he was transgender before sex.

Chris Wilson, 25, was sentenced after pleading guilty to two counts of ‘obtaining sexual intimacy by fraud’.

Instead of facing jail and being on the sex offender’s register for life, Wilson will be on it for three years.

Setting the sentence, judge Lord Bannatyne said he recognized Wilson did not ‘dress’ as a man in order to commit offences, but always dressed that way.

Lord Bannatyne also said Wilson never set out to deliberately harm his ‘victims’ and he would review whether Wilson had broken the terms of his probation order in April 2014.

He added: ‘These are very unusual offences. I have accepted that you genuinely feel that you are male rather than female.

‘I believe this obviously significantly reduces your culpability. I believe that this can be dealt with by the imposition of a probation order.’

Last month, Wilson admitted to having sex with a 15-year-old girl who said she was 16, after telling her he was 16 when he was really 22.

He also admitted to kissing and cuddling another girl who was also 15 at the time. He also lied about his age at the time.

Tim Hopkins, Director of the Equality Network, a LGBT organization in Scotland, said: ‘Chris Wilson broke the law by having sex with the 15-year-old girl who had claimed to be 16.

‘But he was not charged for that, instead the charge was “obtaining sexual intimacy by fraud” because in the Fiscal’s eyes he had “lied” about his gender.

‘It was the wrong charge to bring, and the message it sends to trans people is you will be criminalized if you don’t share your gender history with sexual partners.’

On 3 April, The Scottish Transgender Alliance handed in a petition signed by over 2,400 people urgently asking Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS) to work with trans equality groups.

Nathan Gale, development worker at the Equality Network, said: ‘In the same way that people aren’t obliged to share other personal information with potential partners, for example that they are married or have criminal convictions, trans people shouldn’t be forced to share private information about their gender history under fear of prosecution.’

He added: ‘I sincerely hope that COPFS will understand the seriousness of trans people’s fears and respond to our call to take urgent steps to address them.’