A MAN has been convicted after targeting vulnerable young girls and systematically sexually exploiting and assaulting them.

Unemployed Lewes Harby faces jail after admitting raping two girls under 16, sexually assaulting three other girls and meeting a 15-year-old girl for sex after grooming her.

The 20-year-old, of Railway Road, Newhaven, pleaded guilty to nine counts of sexual offences against six girls, aged between 12 and 15, between 2015 and 2017, at Hove Crown Court.

Last month Harby admitted: sexual assaulting a girl aged 13; four rapes of a girl aged 12; sexually assaulting a 14-year old girl; meeting a 15-year-old girl for sex after grooming; sexually assaulting another girl, aged 15; and raping a girl aged 13.

Detective Constable Rich Valder-Davis, of the Brighton Safeguarding Investigations Unit, said: “Harby got to know his victims all of whom were younger than him, supplying them with mobile phones and giving them alcohol.

“A dangerous sexual predator who targeted young girls has now been safely removed from the streets and we hope this will act as a re-assurance for any other young girls who find themselves in the same distressing situations.”

Lorna Lee, a CPS rape specialist prosecutor, said: “Harby targeted vulnerable young girls, gaining their trust and becoming someone they felt understood them and that they could confide in.

“He abused that trust, fostering relationships with the girls to a point where he could then abuse or rape them.

“Rather than the trustworthy friend they had been led to believe him to be, Harby was a sexual predator who used these young girls for his own sexual gratification.”

Harby will be sentenced on September 29.