A MAN who raped a 14-year-old schoolgirl at a railway station has been sent back to prison after trying to chat up a young girl in a Kent town centre.

Rapist Barry Camwell, 28, who lived at a probation hostel in Tonbridge Road, Maidstone, following his conviction, was marched back to prison for breaking his licence conditions after approaching the girl in a shop in the town.

Security staff at The Mall Chequers alerted police after shop workers told them Camwell was harassing staff.

Camwell was jailed for nine years after he attacked a girl at Dover Priory Railway station in 2002, when he was 22.

On jailing him the judge ordered Camwell to be on licence for five years when he was released and to be placed on the sex offenders’ register indefinitely.

The licence means that Camwell was subject to Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements (MAPPA). To protect the public his movements and behaviour are constantly monitored by the Kent Probation Area.

Det Insp Caroline Nyman, head of the Public Protection Unit for Maidstone, said his swift return to jail was proof that the system for managing offenders in the community is working.

Det Insp Nyman also defended bail hostels like the one Camwell was living in, saying they give the police the ability to keep an eye on dangerous criminals.

She said: "There will always be individuals who are a danger to the public. If we know who they and where they are then we can manage them. If we do not know where they are then we cannot manage them."

This statement was backed up by a spokesman for the Kent Probation Area who said that "without them there would be no facility for community resettlement within a supervised environment".