12 years for `perverted and evil' teenager

A "thoroughly perverted and evil" teenager who raped a 93-year- old widow in a churchyard was yesterday ordered to be detained for 12 years.

Judge Anthony Thorpe told Steven Barton, 17: "The offence ... is so appalling as to make the blood of every right-thinking person in this country run cold."

Barton, who was 15 at the time of the offence, in September last year, was convicted of raping the widow by a jury at Chichester Crown Court. He had attacked the woman when she visited a plaque in memory of her late husband in St Mary's churchyard, Storrington, West Sussex.