A dangerous sexual predator who was jailed for raping a teenage girl in Watford only a few years after a similar attack on another, today lost an appeal against his life sentence.

Arshad Arif, 30, of Belfast Avenue, Slough, travelled to Watford with the specific intention of finding a vulnerable victim to rape, an appeal judge said.

He was found guilty of twice raping the 17-year-old and jailed for life at Reading Crown Court in September last year.

Arif was said to be such a danger to women that only a life sentence could be justified.

Today, he appealed, but three senior judges at the Court of Appeal in London said the crown court judge was fully entitled to hand him the ultimate penalty.

Giving judgment, Mr Justice Green said Arif believed young rape victims were more offenders than the men who attacked them.

The court heard Arif singled out the teenager as a victim and took her to the park where he attacked her in November 2012.

Six years earlier, he had been jailed for five years for a similar rape, the appeal judge said.

Today, his barrister, Matthew Stanbury, argued that, despite the clear danger he poses, it was not necessary to jail Arif for life.

But the judge, sitting with Lady Justice Sharp and Judge Alistair McCreath, said the term was fully justified.

A probation officer's report had highlighted various elements which meant Arif was very dangerous.

He was preoccupied with sex, visiting prostitutes up to five times a week in London, the judge said.

And he had a bad attitude towards his crimes, showing no remorse or empathy for his victims, who he considered were offenders themselves.

He claimed it was a "known fact" that young girls in the UK cry rape in order to get compensation from the government.

"The report paints a clear picture of a person likely to present a durable and high level of risk for the foreseeable future," he said.

"The offending involved a predatory search for a young and vulnerable victim, the removal of the victim from her normal surroundings and a sexual assault in a park.

'This was the second occasion on which this sort of behaviour had occurred. 

'It was not a one-off.'

The judges dismissed the appeal against the life term, but ordered that 305 days Arif spent in custody before he was sentenced should count towards the six-and-a-half years he must serve before applying for parole.