Vile rapist locked up for attack on 14-year-old girl

A rapist who attacked an underage girl in muddy woodland after befriending a group of youngsters has been jailed for six years.

Drunk Dene Stevenson supplied his victim with alcohol before repeatedly trying to have sex with her and then raping her.

A judge told Stevenson (21): “Rape is obviously a serious crime which must attract a significant sentence.”

Lord Uist said Stevenson’s offence was aggravated by being “a calculated attack in a public place on a defenceless 14-year-old girl” who had far too much to drink.

The judge said: “After the incident she telephoned a friend in a distressed state and said she had been raped. You later admitted to her father that you had had intercourse with her.

“It is a matter of concern that you went out that day when you were drunk and befriended a group of much younger girls before walking off into the woods with your victim.”

Lord Uist told the rapist: “You have a history of drug and alcohol abuse and have not worked for over a year.”

Stevenson, of Raeburn Rigg, Livingston, had earlier denied raping the girl on October 20 in 2017 in a wooded area next to the West Lothian town’s Deer Park Golf and Country Club, but was found guilty following a trial.

The victim said she was drunk at the time of the attack but Stevenson, who was 18 at the time, lay on top of her after she slipped on a muddy path and forced himself on her.

Stevenson sent a message to her father urging him not to report him to police and saying to come and give him a kicking.

The court heard that he was “highly intoxicated” at the time of the attack on the teenager.

Stevenson, who followed the sentencing proceedings via a video link to jail, was told that he will be on the sex offenders’ register indefinitely.