A 13-year-old girl's personality changed after she was the victim of an alleged rape, a court heard.

The girl's mother told police her daughter has become withdrawn, moody and tearful.

Immediately after the alleged sex attack the schoolgirl would hardly speak to anyone and needed sleeping tablets at night and suffered from panic attacks during the day.

She had treatment for a sexually transmitted disease and had counselling to help her cope with her alleged ordeal.

The mother told detectives: "She has lost the spark she had in life."

Lee Francis, 18, is on trial at Lewes Crown Court accused of raping the girl in a field in Horsham in April last year.

The girl claims he raped her shortly after meeting her in the town centre. Afterwards, she alleges, he ran off with her mobile phone leaving her alone in the dark.

Francis, of Rillside (crrtt), Furnace Green, Crawley, denies raping her.

In the mother's statement to police, which was read to the jury, she said: "Since the incident took place I have noticed several marked changes in her behaviour. During the first couple of weeks she became very quiet and would not speak to anyone. She would not go out without anyone being with her.

"She is still so painfully quiet. This is nothing like the daughter I used to know. She was always on the phone and seeing friends. Now she is always on her own."

Seven months after the alleged attack, said her mother, she was found by her father in the middle of the night curled up on the floor of the bathroom crying her eyes out.

The mother said it was only earlier this year that the girl started going out again with friends to a youth club, but only because she knew the person who ran the event.

In an interview Francis gave to police after his arrest he denied raping the girl and claims she willingly wanted to have sex with him.

The court heard the girl and her friend, who had been drinking, met up with Francis, who was with a group of his friends, in the town centre during the evening. After chatting the two girls and Francis, along with one of his friends, walked away from the group and ended up in a field near Tanbridge School.

He told officers: "I have not got a clue why she said she had been raped."

He said the girls made it obvious they found him and his friend sexually attractive.

He said: "She said she was 16 and I believed her. She didn't look 13 at all.

"They took us into a field. She led me away from the other two. We got by a tree and she started kissing me. I asked her if she wanted to have sex and she looked at me in a sexy way and said 'Yes'."

But Francis confessed he had problems getting aroused because he had broken up with his girlfriend earlier that day after a row and he could not stop thinking about her.

He said they had decided to go back to the town centre when he heard shouts from a group of teenagers and fearing there was going to be trouble, he ran away. He had forgotten he was holding her phone at the time and later accidentally dropped it in an alleyway, the court heard.

The trial continues.