A CHILD rapist who claims he was attacked by two men with baseball bats has told a jury: "It felt like I was getting hit with a ton of bricks."

Michael Loughran and Karl Carter are accused of tracking him down to a secret address in Darlington just days after he was freed from jail.

The jury at Teesside Crown Court has heard that the best friends put up a £1,000 reward on Facebook for information on his whereabouts.

The prosecution says the 18-year-old was assaulted ten days after his release from a three-and-a-half-year sentence for molesting a child.

He told the jury how he was returning to the flat he shared with his father when he saw Mr Loughran jump out of a van and run towards him.

In an interview with police, he said the 30-year-old attacked him first, smacking him in the back, before Mr Carter, 27, joined in.

The sex offender said he tried to run but tripped and fell over, "hit the deck" and covered his face with his hands as he was assaulted.

“I felt just hitting everywhere across my body," he said in his evidence over a TV screen. "I thought it was going to go on forever."

“It was horrible. It felt like I was getting hit with a ton of bricks if I’m honest. They were just grunting while they were swinging.

"I jumped up and they just ran back to the van and sped off. Loughran was hitting the top part of me and Carter was hitting the bottom.”

Yvonne Taylor, for Mr Carter, cross-examined the alleged victim and suggested he was the one with the weapon on the night of June 28.

Miss Taylor said Mr Carter accepted messaging on Facebook and going with Mr Loughran in the van from their homes in Middlesbrough.

But he denies assaulting the teenager, hitting or kicking him or having any weapon. He says he did not get out of the van until much later.

Mr Loughran says he disarmed the alleged victim, and he suffered a cut to his head when he tripped and fell - not because he was struck.

Miss Taylor asked how he could have seen Mr Carter attacking him if he was curled up on the ground with his hands covering his face.

He answered: “I can still see from between my fingers . . . I didn’t have my eyes closed the whole time . . . I'm not assuming. He hit me."

The teenager's father told the court in a statement how he was hounded out of two homes as tensions grew after his son's conviction in 2012.

He said he received threatening telephone messages, with one caller telling him: "If we can't get hold of [his son] we will kill you."

He also suffered "loads of verbal abuse" from "lads" in the street, he said, with shouts of things such as "monster's dad" and "paedo's dad".

In his statement read to the jury, he said: "As I walked towards them, one of them said 'If we don't get your paedophile son, we'll get you'."

Mr Carter, of Jubilee Road, Eston, and Mr Loughran, of Ryhill Walk, Ormesby, both deny wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm.

The trial will continue on Monday, when the defence cases for the defendants are expected to begin.