A TEENAGER who raped an 11-year-old girl in the lavatories at a busy supermarket was sentenced to nine years’ detention yesterday.

The 15-year-old boy had gone into the Sainsbury’s store in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, to buy food but when he saw the girl walking alone, he decided to follow and grab her.

He was caught three weeks later when his victim, described by police as “the bravest little girl in Britain”, spotted him while driving through the town with her mother.

The youth, who admitted rape at a hearing in April, appeared at Coventry Crown Court wearing a blue tracksuit and a crucifix. Judge Marten Coates told him: “You took an opportunity when [the girl] became separated from her mother. You seized her from behind and, with her eyes and her mouth covered by your hands, you dragged her to a toilet cubicle.

“The incident appears to have been concluded abruptly because of the fortunate arrival of somebody else.”

Before making his escape the youth, who cannot be named, threatened to kill the girl if she told anyone about the attack.

Her mother said that when she returned from the lavatory she immediately began shaking and screaming. “She was saying, ‘Someone in the toilet has done naughty things to me.’ She was crying and very white,” she said.

The mother also described how her daughter had spotted the rapist from their car. “[She] was chatting away then she just stopped talking and as we passed she said, ‘Did you see him look at me suspiciously?’ “I knew what she was going to say to me so I turned the car round. By the time they had returned, he had gone,” she said.

The sighting helped police to narrow their hunt for the rapist, who was caught days later.

The mother said that her daughter was still trying to recover from the attack. “She was bubbly, had a nice personality, outgoing, friendly, with lots of confidence. Now she’s different . . . She’s lost her trust of people.”

Detective Chief Inspector Adrian Pearson said: “If there was an award for the bravest 11-year-old in Britain, she would win it hands down. She gave an excellent description of what she had gone through and she was so cool . . . three weeks after the attack she saw her attacker in the street and identified him.”

As well as the rape, which happened on March 2, the youth admitted four other minor offences including riding up to a woman on his bike and tapping her on her behind before looking at her suggestively. He did this days after raping the girl.

On another occasion he hit a professional woman on the back of her head as she got out of a car before riding off on his bicycle again.

The youth was treated by Warwickshire County Council’s Sexualised Inappropriate Behaviours Service in the year before the rape, it was disclosed yesterday.

His social worker said that the boy had been responsible for a number of “low level” incidents in 2004, but there had been no indication he would go on to rape someone.

John Attwood, in mitigation, said that the boy had been abused as a young child but acknowledged that he would continue to pose a risk until the psychological damage from the abuse had been repaired. “He wishes to express real remorse and shame for what he has done,” he said.

Judge Coates also sentenced the boy to four concurrent 18-month custodial terms for the other offences.

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