A rapist caught by a routine DNA test 14 years after a sex attack was today locked up indefinitely.

Unemployed Kevin Stephen, 43, is deemed to pose a real threat to women even though it is years since the vicious attack on a 21-year-old student in Brighton he admitted at Lewes Crown Court yesterday.

Stephen, of Franklin Road, Brighton, pleaded guilty to rape, kidnap and indecent assault on the young woman.

He was only brought to justice after a DNA swab was taken from him after police stopped him and discovered he was wanted for failing to appear in court over a road traffic offence.

The court heard the victim, a second-year university graphic design student at the time, had gone out for the night with friends on May 13, 1995.

In the early hours of the following morning, she was grabbed from behind by Stephen, punched, and pushed in his car just a short distance from her home.

Prosecutor Fiona Horlick said he tied her hands round her back and wrapped cord round her neck before pushing her into the rear footwell of his car.

"She believed that she would be killed and would never come back," Ms Horlick told the court.

In her terrified state, the victim told Stephen falsely that she had Aids in an effort to "put him off".

Ms Horlick said: "That had no effect whatsoever and he said that he had Aids himself.

"Later she had to go through the long and agonisingly slow process of being tested to see if she had caught HIV or Aids from him."

After stopping the car in an unknown rural location, Stephen subjected her to a brutal sex attack.

Having finished with her, he told the victim: "I can't believe I just did that."

Stephen, who was jailed for six years for raping another woman in Brighton in January 1985, has a string of convictions included an armed robbery for which he received a 10-year jail term in November 1997, two years after he raped the student. He was freed in April 2004.

A DNA sample was taken at the time of the raid but police said it was an "insufficient reading" for it to be loaded on to the database at a time when DNA technology was in its infancy.

Jailing him for an indeterminate term, Judge Guy Anthony said he would not be eligible for parole until after at least six years behind bars.

Stephen will remain on licence for the rest of his life upon his release and will sign the sex offenders register.

Outside court, Detective Chief Inspector Ian Pollard, of Sussex Police, said he believed Stephen posed a "very, very great danger to women".

"No length of sentence can ever repair the damage that he caused to the victim," he said.

He said the woman was still receiving counselling for the ordeal but that she felt relieved to know he was finally behind bars.