Men who raped teenager jailed

8 March 2010, 18:01 | Updated: 9 March 2010, 11:34

Two men who raped a 13 year old girl in a wheelie bin store in Aylesbury - and then celebrated by giving each other a high-five - have started jail sentences.

Elvis Taona, 22, from Oxford, (on the left in the picture) and Walter Mwale, 19, from Birmingham, (on the right) carried out the attack in the Prebendal Farm area of Aylesbury in July 2009.

Taona was sentenced to eight years in prison and Mwale was sentenced to eight years in a detention centre in a hearing at Oxford Crown Court on Monday 8 March 2010.

Judge Julian Hall accepted they had not coerced the girl into the act but said: "This was a sordid little episode.

"The two of you came across a group of schoolgirls who were drunk and you took advantage of one of them, ending up in a storeroom.

"The incident itself lasted really quite a short time. What I find was particularly distasteful was your celebration of the event afterwards when you high-fived each other."

The men did not make any threats to the teenager, who wrote a victim impact statement to explain to the judge how the incident had affected her life, but she was in a "vulnerable" state, the court heard.

She reported the assault to police several days later. Both men denied rape but were found guilty by a jury in January.

Mwale was also given a six-month sentence for possessing a knife which was found hidden in his sock when police spoke to him a few days after the rape.  He will serve that sentence at the same time as the one for the sex attack.