A teenage girl has been left with visible scars on her neck after she was slashed with a knife by a man in the grounds of a Burton church, a court has heard.

For several hours the victim was walked around in remote areas by 20-year-old Claudiu Lucien Vacaru before he finally took her to hospital for treatment.

In that time Vacaru had persuaded the terrified girl to tell doctors that her injuries were the result of her own self-harming.

The girl needed 15 stitches to her wounds and was kept in hospital at which point she told staff what had happened and the police were alerted.

At Stafford Crown Court yesterday Vacaru was sentenced to a total of three years and two months detention at a Young Offenders' Institution for offences of wounding and possession of a knife.

Claudiu Lucien Vacaru has been jailed

Vacaru, of Waterloo Street, in the town, who spoke in court through a Romanian interpreter, was also made subject to an indefinite restraining order not to contact the young victim who cannot be identified for legal reasons.

Initially Vacaru was charged with attempting to murder the teenager on January 22 in the grounds of All Saints' Church, in Branston Road.

He had denied the charge as well as an alternative allegation of inflicting grievous bodily harm with intent.

His trial started at court on Monday, June 18, when a jury was told by prosecutor Philip Bradley about the girl's ordeal at the hands of the defendant.

However, at court on Tuesday, June 19, Vacaru pleaded guilty to a charge of wounding causing the victim grievous bodily harm.

A walkway next to the church was cordoned off after the assault

Mr Bradley said the plea to the alternative allegation of wounding put aside any suggestion by the defence that the young victim was self-harming.

"The defendant has now admitted that he used the knife to inflict the wounds and the prosecution will no longer proceed with the other counts," he said.

Mr Bradley said, that as a result of Vacaru's confession, the Crown Prosecution Service, at a senior level, along with the victim and her family, were content that justice had been done in the case.

Judge Jonathan Golding recorded formal not guilty verdicts on the charges of attempted murder and wounding with intent.

Passing sentence Judge Gosling said that apart from the young girl's physical wounds she had been left with obvious and severe psychological consequences.

"She was a minor and vulnerable and you kept her in remote locations for hours and talked her into giving a false account to hospital staff," he said.

Police on the scene after the attack

He told Vacaru he doubted the meeting on January 22 was 'just by chance' and at the churchyard he had demanded the girl's phone to prevent her calling for help.

"She feared for her life and the ordeal will haunt her for sometime to come," he said.

The court heard they were in the churchyard after 10pm and the defendant had demanded she hand over her phone and during a struggle he had taken out the knife and cut her neck.

She had screamed but no-one heard her and she was in the company of Vacaru for about 10 hours and 28 missed calls were later found on her phone from her frantic parents, the court was told.

During this time Vacaru had threatened to kill himself and even mentioned that they both commit suicide, ignoring the victim's attempts to talk sense into him.

Around 5am they had walked across the town to the hospital and CCTV footage at the hospital showed the defendant appeared to be calm.

The court heard that Vacaru was a troubled young man and had been rejected by his family and left to fend for himself.

He had been living in squalor and latterly before his arrest had been sleeping rough in car parks and fields.

Police at All Saints Church

Darron Whitehead, for Vacaru, said his client had a knife in his possession when arrested and it was the sort of knife he carried when he was self-harming and the evidence was plain to see on his arms.

He said there had been conflict within his client's family and he had been living rough, and the police and paramedics had been called out to help him on several occasions.

Mr Whitehead said Vacaru's guilty plea had avoided the DVD of the girl's interview being played to the court and the obvious cross-examination that would have followed with her had the trial continued.

He said: "It was not pre-arranged or premeditated but what followed he knows was totally wrong," he said.