Father's outrage over lawyer claim

A French lawyer last night stood by his claim that Caroline Dickinson (left), the British schoolgirl who was raped and murdered on a school trip to Brittany, probably knew her killer and let him into the youth hostel where she died.

But Pierre Gonzalez de Gaspard admitted it was not possible for him to be certain whether the 13-year-old from Cornwall had consented to sex with her killer. Caroline's father, John Dickinson, from Bodmin, reacted with outrage yesterday to the lawyer's claim in the newspaper France- Soir that his daughter died "during what she thought was an act of love". "She is not here to defend herself," he said. Caroline was murdered in a tiny shared dormitory in the village of Pleine Fougeres, Brittany, on 18 July last year during a trip with fellow pupils from Launceston Community College, Cornwall.