MONTREAL, QUEBEC — The teenage-prostitution case that has rocked a provincial capital recorded its first conviction yesterday when a jury found Quebec City’s top radio host, Robert Gillet, guilty of having bought the sexual services of a 17-year-old prostitute.

Gillet, 58, was acquitted of the more serious charges of paying for sex with a 15-year-old and sexually assaulting her.

The verdict in the sensational trial is a face-saving outcome for the Crown and the police, whose work was severely criticized by the trial judge, Justice Fraser Martin of the Quebec Superior Court.

“I don’t understand what happened. I don’t understand what happened,” Gillet told reporters when he left the courthouse.

“You cannot imagine the 15 months I’ve been through,” he said yesterday evening in an interview with Radio-Canada, adding that he had considered suicide at one point. “If I had had a gun at home I wouldn’t be here today.”

Judge Martin allowed Gillet to remain free until presentencing arguments, which begin on Tuesday. Because he has no previous criminal record, Gillet is expected to get a fine or a conditional sentence. The maximum penalty is a five-year sentence.

The trial was moved to Montreal because of the publicity in Quebec City.

Gillet was cleared of charges that he paid a 15-year-old girl $350 and sodomized her against her will.

The credibility of the younger girl was tested during her testimony, in which she admitted to making up several tales of having met famous people and being kidnapped by Gillet’s friends.

Months after she was first questioned by police, investigators had to take another deposition to reconcile the girl’s varying statements, a move Judge Martin criticized in a January ruling when the defence sought to have the case thrown out of court.

Speaking of an “unhealthy atmosphere” hanging over the case, the judge denied a stay of proceedings but said that the police probe lacked the proper objectivity.

The younger girl is to testify in other trials, but the Crown is expected to have more corroborating evidence, including surveillance videos or wiretaps, to bolster her credibility.

Approximately 13 alleged pimps and 30 alleged clients were arrested in a police crackdown in 2002 and 2003 on a juvenile-prostitution ring that included 17 young females.

More trials will unfold into the fall in Montreal.

Gillet had conceded that he had sex with the older, 17-year-old prostitute, but said he didn’t know she was a minor.

Praising her maturity and “sculptural beauty,” he testified that her height and demeanor fooled him.

The Crown, however, argued that Gillet had not taken all reasonable steps to check her age.

There was an uproar the day before the verdict when the TVA network translated an Arabic-language phone conversation that police had recorded between Georges Radwanli, one of the men charged with being a pimp, and a friend.

The two Lebanese-born men talked at length about a Quebec City lawyer who uses prostitutes and gifts to bribe judges.

Radwanli told reporters that his friend might have been kidding. But the latest revelation fuelled conspiracy theorists, who are convinced that powerful people were clients of the ring but are being shielded.

Egged on by the city’s competitive morning-radio hosts, skeptical Quebec City residents have created a lobby group pushing for the police investigation to continue.

The citizens group contends that it was impossible to have so many prostitutes for such a small number of clients.