by Keith Hunt

A rapist who was trapped by DNA advances 24 years after a brutal sex attack on a teenager has been jailed for eight years.

Businessman Paul Dyne, 45, was told by Judge Philip Statman the rape was every woman's "worst nightmare".

Maidstone Crown Court heard how the 18-year-old victim was walking along College Road in Deal to a shop on a cold February evening in 1986 when she saw the man who was to attack her.

Deborah Charles, prosecuting, said as she turned into Ark Lane she was grabbed from behind.

She felt a gloved hand over her mouth and was repeatedly told her not to look her attacker.

He indicated he had a knife and dragged her to nearby waste ground.

"He made her kneel in front of him," said Miss Charles. "She was terrified and thought he may well kill her."

Dyne, who is 6ft 1in tall, ordered the woman, who was just 5ft 2in, to perform a sex act on him.

She said she could not and fell backwards. He tied a scarf over her eyes so that she could not see his face.

Miss Charles said Dyne yanked down the victim's jeans and raped her. She was aware of his dirty, unwashed smell.

Afterwards, he told her to close her eyes and not look at him before he took off the scarf.

She went home and told her father what had happened. The police were called but it was not possible to identify her attacker at the time.

It was not until a cold case team revisited the crime last year and forensic scientists further examined DNA found on the woman's underwear that Dyne was arrested in December last year.

The prosecutor said the chances of the rapist being unrelated to Dyne were one in a billion.

He was at the time living in College Road and worked at a shoe factory next to the waste ground where the rape happened.

Dyne, now of New Malden, Surrey, admitted rape. He had previous convictions for indecent assault and indecent exposure dating back to the early 1980s.

He will remain on the sex offenders' register for life.