Schoolboy jailed for life over rape of teacher

LONDON - A British court sentenced a schoolboy who raped a teacher to life imprisonment yesterday, but said the teenager could apply for parole in 4 1/2 years.

The boy, who was 15 when he committed the crime in September, had pleaded guilty in May to oral rape.

"This was a truly dreadful crime," Judge Christopher Moss said at the Old Bailey.

"You subjected your victim to the terror of a physically violent and sexually degrading attack in her own classroom."

The student attacked her after classes on the second day of her employment at the Westminster City School for Boys, the court heard.

The 28-year-old was left covered in blood and bruises, and had bite marks on her breasts after the 12-minute attack, during which she stabbed the 1.80m teenager with a pen and threw furniture at him.

Moss told the schoolboy that, although he posed a "risk for the foreseeable future" to women, the sentence did not mean he would spend the rest of his life in jail.

"Life does not mean life. The object is not to throw away the key," he said. But he added that parole would depend on expert opinion.

The teenager's mother and the school's headmaster had alerted welfare agencies because they could not cope with his anti-social and violent behaviour.

- REUTERS