Chip shop owner Kemal Eren, 31, is being tried at Carlisle Crown Court, where he denies one charge of kidnapping the teenager and one of sexually assaulting her.

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Opening the case for the prosecution, barrister Roger Green said Eren committed the offences on the morning of September 9 after the girl had been for a night out with a friend in Maryport.

Wanting to make sure her daughter got home safely, the girl’s mother asked a local taxi firm to send a car to an agreed rendezvous point.

The girl had drunk some Lambrini wine, but was by no stretch of the imagination drunk, said Mr Green.

After leaving the rugby club in Maryport with her friend at 1am, she walked to where she thought the taxi would be waiting and saw a car, a red Alfa Romeo.

She opened the passenger door and asked if the car was her taxi, said Mr Green.

“The defendant said yes, so she got in the car,” said Mr Green. “He was lying, deceiving her, says the prosecution, about being a taxi driver. He was not and never has been a taxi driver.”

In the journey that followed, said the barrister, Eren drove past the turning for her home, leaving the teenager anxious about what would happen.

He deliberately fondled her leg, said the barrister, and asked if she was sure that she wanted to go home.

He made sexual suggestions, including asking if she would like to have sex with him, the court heard.

Mr Green continued: “She was making it plain repeatedly that she wanted absolutely nothing of this nature to do with him. She simply wanted him to take her home.”

Near the girl’s home, she got out of the car and ran home as fast as she could.

Eren, from Coniston Avenue, Flimby, was arrested two weeks later.

He admitted being the driver of the Romeo and agreed he was not a taxi driver, but had run a takeaway in Maryport for eight years.

On the night in question, he said, he had been parked innocently waiting to meet an acquaintance when the teenager got into his car. He denied sexually assaulting her or making indecent suggestions. He claimed the girl smelled of drink.

In evidence, the girl said she had assumed Eren’s car was her taxi because of where it was parked.

She rejected a suggestion by his barrister Alison Whalley that she knew his car was not a taxi and that he had not deliberately touched her in a sexual way during the journey.

The case continues.