A teenager who twice raped an 11-year-old girl has been placed on probation.

A judge told Harley Donaldson, 17, that because of the very full information he had received about him in a number of reports he had decided the correct course to follow was to put him on probation for three years.

Donaldson, who was 13 or 14 at the time of the offence, earlier admitted raping the girl in a Perthshire village on two occasions between April 2008 and February 2009, when he appeared at the High Court in Edinburgh.

Lord Uist said: "In normal circumstances the crimes which you committed would almost inevitably result in a sentence of detention for a period of some years."

The judge said: "You were either 13 or 14 years old and the girl was 11 years old when these crimes were committed."

Lord Uist pointed out that no physical force was used by Donaldson on either occasion but it amounted to rape because of the age of the girl.

The judge said he noted that he continued to deny committing the crimes which he had pled guilty to and that he had a mental disorder in the form of a learning disability.

He attached a number of conditions to the probation order imposed on Donaldson, including that he should have no unsupervised contact with children under 16 without advance approval from his supervising officer.

Lord Uist said: "If we meet again it will be because you have breached your probation order. I hope we will not meet again because if we do it means almost certainly you will be going to detention."

Donaldson, of Kirriemuir in Angus, had sex with the girl at a house and in a wooded area.

Defence counsel Drew Mckenzie pointed out that the teenager had an IQ level of 61 and urged the judge to follow a recommendation for probation.