A ST John Ambulance leader who sexually abused a teenage girl has been jailed for five years along with a man who raped her when he was a teenager.

Former St John cadet leader Timothy Chambers, 51, and Christopher Lawn, aged 29, were both convicted following a trial at Merthyr Tydfil Crown Court.

Lawn was convicted of seven charges including one of rape of the girl, who is now in her 20s and cannot be named for legal reasons, while Chambers was convicted of three charges of sexual activity with a child including that he had forced the girl, while she was a teenager, to perform sexual acts.

All the offences took place in Llandrindod Wells where Chambers was a cadet leader with the ambulance charity.

Judge Richard Twomlow told bearded Chambers: "She trusted and looked up to you. She visited your flat and she trusted you."

The court was told Chambers had a police caution for indecent assault, against a teenage girl, from 1996 which the judge had ruled the jury shouldn’t be told about before they had reached their verdicts.

The judge told him: "This was grooming behaviour, there was a degree of an abuse of trust and the caution is an aggravating factor."

He told Lawn, who has Asperger’s Syndrome, he had had groomed the youngster and used violence towards her. But said: "I have to accept you were a child only 13, not a mature person, and had other difficulties."

The court was told despite the involvement of social services no action was taken and a police investigation was only opened in 2016.

The woman addressed her abusers, who were sat in the dock, when she read her personal victim impact statement to the court.

She told them: "Throughout the years of mental torture I put myself through for allowing myself to be abused by two people I thought I had nothing to live for but now I finally got a diagnosis for post traumatic stress I learned it is not my fault."

Clare Wilkes, defending, Lawn, whose address was given as Penylan Road, Roath, Cardiff, asked the judge to make a "significant adjustment" to his sentence as he was a teenager at the time of the offending and social services had been aware "something had happened". She said had the matters been investigated he could have been dealt with as a youth at the time.

She said: "He is now 29 he hasn’t offended since that time is married and moved to Cardiff.

"His conditions mean he may well feel the impact of a custodial sentence more than other adult offenders would."

Jonathan Rees, for Chambers, said though Chambers was a cadet leader the offences were not committed while in that capacity.

He said: "He is 51 but his health is that of an older man. He is a long term asthmatic, he suffered a stroke in 2013 and has type two diabetes."

Mr Reees said Chambers, who gave his address as Loudon House, Butetown in Cardiff, had also been diagnosed with depression.

An indefinite restraining order, preventing either men from ever contacting the woman again, was made and both will be banned from regulated activity with children while they will also have to notify the authorities they are sex offenders.