A care home worker who was jailed for 12 months in 2022 after she sent graphic sexual images to, and inappropriately touched a 16-year-old girl under her care, has been back before the courts for a similar historic offence.

On Tuesday (March 12), Preston Crown Court heard Kelly Stowell, 42, had an inappropriate relationship with a vulnerable teenager in her care while she worked at a young person’s care home in Lancashire between August 2016 and August 2017.

Stowell, who would have been around 35 at the time, kissed and engaged in sexual activity with the girl, who was around 15 years of age, and cannot be named for legal reasons, and led her to believe that the pair were in a ‘relationship’.

The ‘relationship’ ended when Stowell, from Barnoldswick, left her job at that particular care home, and the teenager reached the age of 16 and moved to East Lancashire.

However, Mark Stephenson, prosecuting, said two years later, in 2019, Stowell was arrested in relation to allegations of sexual abuse, made by a different teenage girl.

Those allegations related to incidents which occurred in 2018, a year after her ‘relationship’ with this vulnerable victim ended, with Stowell telling this victim that the other teenager had mental health issues.

She also told this victim to delete all messages and photos shared between them from her phone.

Mr Stephenson said: “The victim in this case was spoken to by the police about those allegations but she said she didn’t have anything to report.”

However, following Stowell’s first court appearance in 2022, the teen came forward and told the police what had occurred between them in 2016 and 2017.

Stowell was then jailed for 12 months in July 2022 in relation to the 2018 incidents.

She was not charged with the 2016/17 offences until 2023, when she had been released from prison.

READ MORE: Barnoldswick care worker inappropriately touched and sent naked photos to girl

In mitigation, Sarah Magill said her client had taken steps since then to rehabilitate herself, including psychotherapy, engaging with probation and social workers, and had already served a prison sentence.

She said the prison sentence and her behaviour had, “cost her her marriage and her children”.

Judge Mathieson said: “I want everyone to understand that this is a wholly unacceptable situation in this case.

“I do not know why matters have been delayed in this case for so long. I have been offered no explanation from the CPS or the police for their delay and inaction.

“It seems that any keenness to prosecute you was taken out, whereas the proper approach would have been to progress the allegations by this victim so everything could have been dealt with together.

“You have made progress since your release and now I have the threat of sending you back to prison which puts me in an almost impossible position – to reflect fairness to your victim, but also fairness to you as a result of that delay.

“This was a relationship that took place before the one I sentenced you for in 2022.

“There’s no doubt that at the time, in the mid 2010s, you were attracted to young vulnerable teens, because I suspect, they gave you affection and you interpreted that as some form of love and you twisted their needs to your own end.

“Whether one classes it as an abuse of position or trust, it was child abuse, and you should have known better and I think you did know better but you put aside their concerns for you own desires and wishes.

“There is no doubt in my mind that if the prosecution had acted promptly you would have been serving a lengthier prison sentence and may still be in prison now.”

Judge Mathieson said any risk Stowell posed to children in the 2010s did not apply now, and considering she had rehabilitated herself since her release from prison, handed her a suspended sentence.

Stowell, of St Mary’s Avenue, Barnoldswick, pleaded guilty to sexual activity with a child as a person in a position of trust, and two counts of inciting a child to engage in sexual activity with a person in a position of trust, and was jailed for 12 months suspended for two years.

She had already been made subject to a 10 year notification requirement and barred from working with vulnerable children indefinitely, both of which still stand.