The parents of a girl who was raped and blackmailed by a teenager she met online have said dealing with the court case has been worse than when their daughter had a life-threatening illness.

The couple, who were speaking after Emmanuel Agbaje, of Silver Streak Way, Strood, was convicted of attacks on nine girls, say they have felt guilty and helpless as they have watched her struggle to get on with normal life following the ordeal.

“It’s been worse than when she was seriously ill,” the victim’s dad said. “There was no guidebook for that or for this, but we felt we could deal with her illness because we were a family and we were fighting it together.

“This has just knocked it out of us. It’s like an external force grabbing at you. It’s just left us all on the floor really.”

Their daughter was just 16 when she was raped by 17-year-old Agbaje in the toilets of KFC in Strood after he approached her online and bombarded her in a “sinister campaign”.

This included asking her to send him nude photos, pretending to know everything about her family and blackmailing her – threatening to harm them if she did not have sex with his friend.

The couple, who cannot be named, said they were unaware of what had happened until their daughter broke down and revealed the details the next morning.

Her mum said: “She didn’t want me to know everything. Even in court when she heard bits of what happened being read out she was physically recoiling at the details.

“She felt embarrassed and ashamed but I told her there was nothing she could tell me that wasn't worse than what I was already thinking.”

Her dad added: “She wanted to protect us from hearing everything.”

Agbaje even made contact a week after his attack, still trying to exert influence over her.

One of the hardest things for her mum was realising she was the one who had dropped her daughter off at the station to meet her attacker and picked her up after.

‘This has just knocked it out of us’

“She told me she was going to go and meet a friend. But she didn’t seem right before or after."

And her mum is worried she could have done more, despite warning her about the dangers of social media.

But she says the police have reassured them their daughter had not been foolish.

“It isn’t just foolishness that has led to this, the police said. This is a calculated, very clever man, who knew what he was doing and knew how to manipulate people.”

After she revealed her version of what happened, her mum said her daughter stopped going out and started having nightmares.

“She wasn’t sleeping,” she said. “I would have to go in and lay down with her at night and comfort her. The only place she felt safe was in her bedroom.”

But her parents said she is a "fighter" who had struggled to put the traumatic events in a box and get on with her life.

Now the court case has brought everything flooding back – for the whole family.

Her dad couldn’t sit in the court at all, saying: “I didn’t want to see him. I didn’t even want to know his name. I never want to see him.”

But her mum sat through the days of testimonies.

“It was gut-wrenching,” she said. “Hearing what he did to those girls leaves you shredded at the end of it. It’s just horrendous.

“And to think your own daughter is one of those girls. You cannot get your head around it. You cannot compute that something so horrible has happened to your own flesh and blood. It’s like an out-of-body experience. It's difficult to link it together.”

But she said her daughter was so brave in court.

“I saw her put together the e-fit and how upset she was as she started to put his face together. She struggled to hold it together just seeing a computerised version, so this must have been unbearable for her.”

And she said despite having the option to not look at their attacker all the girls chose to sit in his eyeline.

She said the toughest part for her daughter was hearing his letter of mitigation.

She said: “He was totally emotionless. Nothing excuses what he did. My daughter walked out as she couldn’t bear to listen to the lies in his letter of mitigation about who he was and how full of remorse he was.

“We could tell it was meaningless.”

And the sentencing has brought all the feelings the family had tried to bury back to the fore.

Her dad said: “Everything has been really hard now since the court case started. This bit has affected me a lot more. She is being put through it again.”

Mum added: “Our daughter had done a really good job of boxing it all off and this has just opened it all up again. It’s like having to live it all over again.”

They said she has taken days off school, started coming in early from being out with friends and is taking comfort from spending more time close to her family.

‘I never want to see him’

But they are also seeing the one positive to come out of the case.

Her mum said: “It was thanks to her evidence that they caught him. They had DNA from the attack and CCTV from the time she met him.

“And she had been able to describe in detail the trainers he wore during the attack, which were very distinctive.

"It’s the one thing she can take away from this. She has put a stop to it by remembering detail which has been able to help them prove the case against him.”

And what do they think of their daughter’s attacker?

Her mum said: “All the details of the attacks show he is a truly evil person, not just a chancer. It is not just about the physical side but the humiliation too. It is just sickening.”

While her dad added: “I want nothing but grief for him for the rest of his life.”

Today, an order protecting Agbaje’s identity was lifted by the court after an appeal by KentOnline which was backed by the family.

In reaction to the sentencing and the order being lifted he said: "We were pleased with the sentencing. It was as much as we could have expected and hoped for.

‘The only place she felt safe was in her bedroom’

“He was always going to get a lighter sentence because he wasn't an adult.

"We were annoyed they even tried to put an injunction on naming him. The fact he is so dangerous and a huge risk to the public at this stage of his life and he is 18 next week means he should be named.

"It kind of does help us put a lid on it. We needed to get to this point of the sentencing.

"It will always be there, but she will hopefully be able to put it behind her.

"We are still in shock really. The sentencing took a lot more out of us than we thought, as it brought it all back to the surface.

"Hopefully now we will be able to get back to how we were."

"People have a right to know he is out there and doing these things. It also might make other victims come forward if they recognise the face and the name."