Youth faces double rape charges

A 16-year-old youth will appear in court today charged with the double rape of a 15-year-old girl in Belfast.

The teenager, arrested yesterday in Newry, Co Down, faces two charges of raping the girl in West Belfast while she was on holiday from the north of England.

He will also face charges of indecent assault, causing grievous bodily harm, four counts of armed robbery and four of false imprisonment when he appears before Lisburn Magistrates Court in Co. Antrim.

Another 16-year-old youth was earlier remanded in custody on charges of aiding and abetting rape, robbing and assaulting a female and assaulting a male.

The teenage girl was attacked and twice raped and robbed by two males the weekend before last.

Three teenage boys she was with were beaten with an iron bar, stripped to the waist and forced to watch while she was raped.

Horrified police revealed that the girl’s stolen mobile phone was used by one of her attackers to call her mother and gloat over what had happened.

The girl, and the boys she was with, were attacked in the Black’s Road area after slipping out unnoticed by parents from the house where she was staying to go to an all-night shop.

The girl was dragged into an empty petrol station forecourt on Black’s Road and raped. The boys were hit with an iron bar.

All four were then taken to a nearby golfing complex where the second rape took place.