A rapist who dragged a 16-year-old girl into a garden where he punched her to the ground before attacking her has been refused permission to appeal against his jail term and conviction.

Elliston Sutherland, of Ferguson Avenue, Gravesend, was convicted of rape in 2002 and sentenced to 12 years behind bars, with an additional four to be spent on licence.

He targeted his victim after she had been for a night out with friends.

She was making her way back to a pub to find a mobile phone she had lost when Sutherland, who was 25 at the time, pulled her into a garden in Parrock Street, Gravesend.

At his sentencing hearing in 2002 Judge Anthony Webb said he was passing a longer than normal sentence to protect the public from serious harm.

On Tuesday 31-year-old Sutherland urged judges at London’s Court of Appeal to give him more time to put together an appeal against his conviction.

But Mr Justice MacDuff told the Court of Appeal that the evidence against Sutherland was “overwhelming” with both eyewitnesses and DNA evidence helping to secure his conviction.