A babysitter who had sex with an 11-year-old boy has been spared jail after his father, who had formerly been a sexual partner of hers, told the court that his son had regarded it as "a notch on his belt".

The Swindon Advertiser reported that Jade Hatt, 21, "climbed astride" him last November, removed her clothes and then took off the boy's.

The judge gave Hatt a suspended sentence on the grounds that while she was "immature", her victim was "unusually mature", which in his view narrowed "the arithmetic age gap", according to the Daily Mail.

Hannah Squire, prosecuting, told the court that: "The defendant was friends with the boy's father, with whom she had had a brief sexual relationship."

She said that on one of the occasions on which she was babysitting the boy, he was lying down, at which point: "Jade Hatt sat on top of him, sat astride him, took off her clothes and removed his.

"In his words she started bouncing on his private parts. Sexual intercourse took place. According to him it was fairly brief: about 45 seconds. She told him she enjoyed it, he said he had not as it was wrong," she said.

According to the Swindon Advertiser, the boy's father called police after he found a love bite on the boy's neck and texts on his phone.

The father told the court: "I know he told her he was 15. He looks older than his years. He is sex mad.

"He would have been fully up for this experience and in many ways sees it as a notch on his belt and is totally unaffected by it."

Hatt's lawyer, Rob Ross, said his client was "small", "immature", and "clearly doesn't operate at the level of a 20-year-old".

The judge, Tim Mousley QC, accepted this argument, telling the court that the case was so exceptional he could go beyond usual sentencing guidelines. He told the defendant: "Having read everything before me, it was quite clear he was a mature 11-year-old and you were an immature 20-year-old so that narrows the arithmetic age gap between you."

He added: "I have read the comments of the boy's father to the police where he doesn't consider you a typical 20-year-old. I have also read what he has said about the effect on the victim."