A traumatised schoolgirl stayed up all night waiting for police after being chased into a block of flats and sexually assaulted.

The 11-year-old, from Hove, was groped by a man who had watched her playing on the beach and later followed her.

Despite a frantic call to police after the attack, officers failed to turn up until the next morning.

Police last night apologised for the 13-hour delay in sending anyone, blaming a shortage of resources.

The girl first noticed the man when he began rubbing himself against her in a queue for ice creams on the seafront at about 6pm on Sunday.

She said: "He started touching me but at first I thought it must be an accident.

"I moved forward away from him but he kept coming closer. He kept trying to talk to me, telling me what a nice tan I had."

She and a friend lost sight of him when they bought their ice creams and the pair went to sit on the beach for about half-an-hour.

However, they were followed when they went to the block of flats in Hove where her friend's mother lived.

She said: "She buzzed us in and just as we were closing the door, he ran up and forced his way in.

"He followed us into the lift and started talking to us and getting closer to me.

"He grabbed me and started touching and pinching me. We had our bikinis on and I had a towel around me.

"I was really scared. I jumped out of the lift at the wrong floor and ran up two flights of stairs. My friend found me and we went to her mum's.

"We were both really shaking. The police said they would be along soon but they didn't come all night."

Neighbours tried looking for the man but could not track him down.

The girl's mother said: "I did jury service recently and it was said in court that police should respond to a child being indecently assaulted within an hour.

"The police kept saying they could appreciate what my daughter had been through but no one was available.

"Even when they finally came they didn't take a proper statement.

"This guy looked like he was a biker. He is probably miles away by now. It's disgusting what happened to my daughter and how the police have reacted."

The girl said: "If the police had come on the night, I think it would have helped me calm down a bit.

"I didn't sleep at all last night. I was so frightened and shaken up."

Inspector Beryl Bacon, of Hove police, said: "My heart goes out to the family and we offer our apologies.

"We sent officers to do a search of the area for about 40 minutes based on the description we had.

"Normally we would send someone straight away to the victim but unfortunately we had a series of calls at the time and we had absolutely no one available.

"In retrospect it would have been better to send some of those searching the area to see the family instead but we felt we were doing the right thing at the time."

She said police were treating the attack very seriously and probing whether the man was on his own or part of a group at the rockers' reunion in Madeira Drive, Brighton.

The attacker was about 6ft, in his 40s, with dark hair and a beard and carried an electric blue motorcycle helmet.