A SHOP worker has been spared jail after sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl inside a store.

Mubarak Besada, 52, was found guilty of kissing the girl and groping her at the Poundzone in Boundary Road, Hove.

District judge Tessa Szagun said the offences were so serious that he faced a minimum of 26 weeks in jail. But she allowed the father-of-two to walk free from court with his sentence suspended for two years on Friday at Brighton Magistrates Court.

The worker, described as the “best employee ever” by the shop’s owner, targeted the girl who has learning difficulties when she visited the store with her three-year-old nephew on October 16 last year.

Brighton Magistrates’ Court was shown CCTV of Besada kissing her shortly after entering the store. The girl claimed that the 52-year-old touched her in an aisle away from the CCTV camera.

She said the shopworker, who she frequently saw when she visited the store with her mother, purposely threw a ball to distract her nephew to allow him a chance to grope her.

Besada admitted sexually assaulting the girl by kissing her but pleaded not guilty to further sexually assaulting her by touching her breasts and bottom.

But Judge Szagun found he did sexually assault the girl.

Defending, Robert Gregory, told the court Besada faced being attacked if he was sent to prison. He said: “My concern is if you impose an immediate custodial sentence today, other prisoners will have access to the internet or copies of The Argus. At HMP Lewes he would be at risk of attack.”

He added Besada, who came to the UK in 2012 as a Christian asylum seeker from Sudan fleeing radicals trying to convert him to Islam, still disputed groping the girl.

Sentencing Judge Szagun said she was bound by sentencing guidelines to suspend the sentence as there was prospect of rehabilitation by way of a community order.

She said: “I have heard of the strength of feeling of the public in terms of a penalty they might demand. But I am bound by the law, and they as well the family need to understand I am bound by sentencing guidelines in fixing the appropriate penalty.”

Besada, of Chailey Road, Brighton, was sentenced to 26 weeks imprisonment suspended and a community order including 40 days of rehabilitation activity sessions and 200 hours unpaid work.

He was also made to pay £115 victim surcharge and £300 in costs.

He also has to sign the sex offenders register and is subject to a Sexual Harm Prevention Order, which prevents him from having any unsupervised contact or communication with a female under age 16 other than inadvertent and unavoidable contact in the course of lawful daily life.