A man who had sex with a 14-year-old girl with her mother's approval will be sentenced later.

Daniel Balfour admitted having underage sex with the teenager at her family home in Berwickshire.

The girl's mother defended her decision to allow her daughter to sleep with the 22-year-old, saying she was trying to protect her daughter.

Balfour has been placed on the sex offenders' register and is due to be sentenced at Duns Sheriff Court in Berwickshire.

The mother, who cannot be named to prevent the schoolgirl being identified, said that despite her best efforts she could not stop the relationship, so she let it continue.

In a letter to a newspaper in November, she wrote: "Do you know what your 14-year-old daughter is doing? Well I do!"

She added: "As many mothers know, you can't lock a 14-year-old in their room until they are 16.

"In an ideal world, we all try to protect our children and this is what I was trying to do."

But Scottish Conservative justice spokesman Bill Aitken said the mother's actions were "totally inappropriate", saying she should have put a stop to the relationship.

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