Girl of 13 faced hate campaign and Facebook bullying... for reporting she had been raped



A rape victim aged 13 and her family were targeted by online bullies in her market town after she reported her attacker to police.

The girl had been raped in an alleyway by a 15-year-old ‘sexual predator’ and left in a ‘hysterical state’.

But although her parents soon arrived to rescue her from her immediate ordeal, another nightmare was about to begin through months of malicious abuse and even threats of violence via a Facebook page set up to proclaim the attacker’s innocence.

'Close-knit': The girl's parents were distressed that Clitheroe could harbour so much violence

Some of the abuse came from former friends of the girl who was accused of being a ‘lying little skank’. Her parents were told their house would be burned down unless she withdrew her evidence.

Missiles, stones and eggs were hurled at the house and her mother was approached by youths who tried to intimidate her into making her daughter drop the case.

The mother, a lecturer, had to escort the teenager around town for fear of further attacks and harassment. Their home in Clitheroe was put on ‘vulnerability watch’ by Lancashire Fire Brigade which drew up an emergency escape plan for the family.

Last night after the rapist, now 16, was jailed for 31 months at Preston Crown Court, the girl’s parents, who made a copy of some of the worst abuse, revealed the full extent of their harrowing ordeal.

Her mother said: ‘Shame on them for doing this to such a young girl and to our family.

‘We hadn’t done anything wrong yet there was this Facebook group and our home was being attacked with missiles. Our daughter even started to believe that some of the abuse about her was true. It has been an incredibly distressing experience particularly because these people lived in our very close-knit community.’

The girl’s father, a mechanic, added: ‘She completely stopped going out and she is still terrified to leave the house. Even when my wife was walking the dogs she was getting pestered and it was not just by youngsters, it was adults too.’

Judge Norman Wright told the court that the abuse represented ‘a snapshot of how a part of society could behave’. Police believe it started when the attacker, who cannot be named because of his age, initially denied the offence. Passing sentence yesterday, the judge told him: ‘Others jumped on the bandwagon and treated her in a way that no other victim of rape should be treated.’

The girl said in a victim impact statement that the abuse had left her feeling the rape was her fault.

The attacker forced himself on his victim in an alleyway near Clitheroe Football Club in January 2011. Her parents, who had driven around the town trying to find her, finally got through to her on a mobile phone and heard the end of the rape ordeal, with their daughter screaming for the attacker to ‘stop it’.

She was discovered, naked from the waist down and covered in mud, by a dog walker. Her parents and the police then arrived.

The attacker, from Clitheroe, who was already on bail for sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl in August 2010 – for which he was subsequently convicted – fled and was arrested later. At first he claimed sex was consensual, but eventually pleaded guilty to rape.

A 13-year-old girl who abused the mother in the street was identified to police and made to meet the family face-to-face and say sorry.

Further apologies followed, including one from a 15-year-old boy who had threatened to burn down the house.