A schoolboy horror film addict who hit a teenage girl with a vodka bottle during a 'Silence of the Lambs' fantasy has been locked up for 12 months.

The 16-year-old youth from Hayes, who cannot be named for legal reasons, had been accused of throwing the 14-year-old girl into a makeshift dungeon before raping her, a court heard last week.

The victim told how he re-enacted a scene from the Anthony Hopkins classic film by giving her a list of ways she could die and ordered her to choose one.

The shavenheaded youth, who was appearing for sentencing at the Old Bailey last Friday, admitted punching the girl and hitting her on the head with a vodka bottle but denied rape and false imprisonment during a trial last month.

The jury accepted the pair had consensual sex together and he was cleared of the rape and false imprisonment charges.

During the trial the youth told the Old Bailey his young victim gave him a love bite before they both stripped for sex.

He told the court: "We were flirting on the bed and after kissing and cuddling we started to get more intimate.

"I pulled a mattress from under my bed and we both got undressed."

He said the girl then agreed to sex.

But he flew into a rage when she called him names after an argument over a rollup cigarette.

He admitted he tried to throttle the terrified teenager and then started punching her.

He said: "I don't like people calling me names."

The girl told the court: "He said he was going to kill me, and gave me options. He started going on about films like Silence of the Lambs.

"He described part of the film to me where a woman was on her chest and some bloke slit her back open and cut her in pieces."

The girl had gone to Hayes to see her boyfriend when she bumped into the teenager in the early summer of last year.

The court heard that the pair had had consensual sex together in the past and they went together to his home in Hayes.

Sentencing last Friday, Judge Richard Hawkins, QC, imposed a 12 month detention and training order and sent the youth to a young offenders' institute.

He told the youth: "You started hitting her because you did not like being called names.

"You then put a shirt over her head so you would not hurt her as much.

"You picked up a vodka bottle and hit her on the head.

"You then said 'I think I started to strangle her when her arms were behind her'."

The court heard the youth has previous convictions for robbery, violence and criminal damage.

Judge Hawkins added: "Plainly the offence itself is as serious an offence of assault occasioning actual bodily harm as one can find."

January 30, 2003 08:30