A TEENAGER was sentenced to four years youth custody today for the knifepoint rape of a 16-year-old girl.

Jason Evenden had claimed he was not responsible for the terrifying attack, but was caught out by damning DNA evidence.

Maidstone Crown Court heard that the victim had spent the evening of April 11 last year -Easter Sunday - with two friends.

They went to a fish and chip shop in Ditton, near Maidstone, before the girl victim walked off alone to go home.

Evenden, then 16, approached her from behind, held a knife at her back and asked three times for the time. He then marched her to the village recreation ground.

There, he put a hand over her mouth, pulled her to the ground and raped her. Afterwards, she went to a friend's home and told her what had happened.

Peter Alcock, prosecuting, said the girl was reluctant to report the matter to police. "She wanted to move on and to forget it; she wanted to block it out of her mind," he said.

She also refused to be medically examined. But forensic examination of her underwear revealed a DNA profile that matched Evenden's.

The likelihood of it coming from someone else was put at about one in a billion.

Evenden, now 17, said he did not know the girl and had never had sex with her. He claimed he had only ever had intercourse with one girl.

The girl told the jury: "We landed up at the rec. I can't remember what happened after he put his hand over my mouth."

She said two rings and a chain she was wearing were taken by her attacker.

"I can remember seeing his face in front of me," she said. "He had a turned up nose."

Asked if she remembered intercourse with him, she replied: "That's what I've wiped out. When it happened I could remember, but not how it happened. I have tried not to remember it."

She refused a medical examination, she said, because she did not want anyone touching her.

The victim said of her reluctance to go to the police: "I was scared; maybe he would come and find me, and I didn't want to drag it out. I wanted to forget, really."

Her mother insisted that the incident should be reported.

Evenden, of Lister Close, East Malling, denied rape but the jury took less than an hour to convict him.

Ian Henderson, defending, said that there was little mitigation. "I ask to give him light at the end of the tunnel," he said.

Judge Michael Neligan said the starting point was five years custody but he would reduce it by a year because of Evenden's age.

The teenager will remain on the sex offenders' register for life.