A teenager stabbed 35 times by a masked attacker may be left with permanent mental and physical scars, a judge said today.

Judge Graham Boal told the Old Bailey the 17-year-old student and her 19-year-old boyfriend had been held up at gunpoint in a dark, isolated car park by a man wearing a balaclava.

He told the jury: "She will be permanently scarred physically and you may think the mental scars both to her and her friend will be no less lasting."

The youth had no way of knowing that the bullet the man fired over his head, before hitting him and locking him into a car boot, was a blank.

The girl was marched out of the car in the Ditchling Common beauty spot, where she physically stopped the man from raping her.

The judge said: "His response was to attack her viciously with a knife."

The teenager, who had to have 143 stitches, ended the attack by kicking the man in the crotch.

The judge was summing up in the case of unemployed Ian Haywood, 37, of Willow Way, Hurstpierpoint, who denies being the attacker on January 18 last year.

He has pleaded not guilty to attempted murder, attempted rape, false imprisonment and two charges of attempted robbery.

Judge Boal said: "The primary issue is not what the assailant did, but who the assailant was.

"This defendant says he was not the man who attacked them."

The trial continues.