A MAN accused of raping a 13-year-old girl in his father’s car has admitted sexual contact with her, but claims it was consensual.

Sameer Tasib told a jury yesterday he had been befriended by the girl online and she had initiated their sexual encounters, which he stopped when he realised her real age.

The 22-year-old, who works for his father as a taxi driver, denies rape and sexual assault.

He told a jury at Reading Crown Court that while he did not know her, he had “seen her around”, but never in school uniform.

Tasib said he met her on Facebook and there had been exchanges of messages, leading to mobile phone numbers being swapped and a series of “flirty” text messages between them.

Lauren Soertsz, defending, asked him: “Did you tell her how old you were?”

He replied: “She asked me how old I was and I asked how old she was. She said she was 17. She was saying, in a flirty way, she wanted to meet up. I thought: ‘Why not?’ “I thought she was interested in me in a sexual way.”

Tasib said that on the first occasion the girl had got into his taxi, in early 2011, she had asked him to join her in the back but he had declined.

That summer she allegedly contacted him again, asking to meet, which they did.

He picked her up in the taxi, drove her to a quiet spot where he said she performed a sex act on him.

He told the jury he encountered her on a couple of occasions after that, once at Oxford’s Nanford Guest House, but simply said hello.

Tasib said that in December 2011 she called him, telling him: “I’ve got a room, do you want to come round?”

He said she meant the Nanford Guest House, which he went to. “I thought she was inviting me around on a sexual basis,” he said.

However, when he got there he found there were three other men there and he said he only stayed about 20 minutes.

He said: “I texted her around a couple of weeks later. I said: ‘Don’t phone me or text me. Don’t mess with me’.”

He claimed the message was because his young cousin had seen that Tasib knew the girl on Facebook and had informed him how old the girl was.

Tasib, who is now married, denied that the girl had ever been in his father’s Audi. He also denied ever using violence towards her.

The trial, before Judge Nicholas Wood, continues.