July 2006 Sex attacker gets six years… A MAN who raped a 13-year-old girl just yards from Dewsbury Railway Station has been jailed for six years. Neil Blackall, 23, of Chinewood Avenue, Batley, was branded “every woman’s nightmare” by a judge after admitting rape at Leeds Crown Court. Along with his prison sentence, Blackall’s name was added to the sex offenders’ register for life and he was also banned from ever working with children. The court heard how Blackall singled out the teenager, a virgin, on Saturday March 11 while she was waiting in Dewsbury Bus Station after a day out in Leeds. The terrified girl walked out of the bus station but was followed by Blackall to a small skatepark area on the corner of Eightlands Road and Ashworth Road. It was there that Blackall dragged her behind a high stone wall and tried to choke her. He then raped her and carried out other sexual acts before fleeing the scene. Passing sentence, Judge Alistair McCallum told him: “The girl was a total stranger to you and you picked her up at random and attacked her in a deserted place. “It is the nightmare of every woman and the terrible nightmare of an innocent child to be attacked by a stranger – and a brutal attack at that.” Judge McCallum described the crime as an “appalling offence” and added: “I seriously considered whether I should pass a sentence of imprisonment designed for public protection and I have come within a hair’s breadth of doing so.” Miss Katherine Robinson, prosecuting, told the court that the teenager had been out in Leeds and returned to Dewsbury to meet friends before going to the bus station. But the girl decided to go and see a friend and was followed by Blackall as she did so. She noticed him tracking her and she crossed the road several times to shake him off. Miss Robinson said that the girl turned into the skate park but saw his shadow and sped up. Blackall grabbed her by the throat and told her: “I’m not going to hurt you.” He then dragged her to the ground and, as she screamed for help, he hit her in the face and stripped her from the waist down before raping her. In a police interview he said he could not explain why he followed her and was not thinking of raping her. He felt disgusted with himself afterwards. The girl’s ordeal sparked a police helicopter chase that resulted in a man being arrested at Leeds Railway Station.  He was later released without charge and Blackall was arrested after being caught on camera in the area on a supermarket’s CCTV network. The girl alerted a group of friends to the attack and, while describing her attacker to police on a mobile phone, a teenage boy overheard the description and ran to the train station to find him. He then spotted a man fitting the description and followed him onto a train to confront him, before being thrown off by a security guard before it left the station. He then ran back to the scene of the attack, where police and paramedics had already arrived, and described the man to officers. The police helicopter was called out and followed the train to Leeds Railway Station, where British Transport Police arrested him before releasing him without charge. The area where the attack happened was known as a regular hide-out for heroin addicts, bag thieves and muggers because of the high stone wall that they could hide behind. This wall has since been knocked down.