OTTAWA - A mentally-ill man deemed a high risk to reoffend after he groped a stranger on a bus was convicted Wednesday of raping a "childlike" 14-year-old runaway who helped him after he was robbed.

James Sherwood, 26, was convicted of a string of sex charges plus breaching a probation order to get psychiatric help.

Judge Jacqueline Loignon rejected his story - including that the girl willingly had sex with him four times and said she was 26 - as "riddled with holes."

The pair met about midnight on Nov. 8, 2011, at a McDonald's when the girl came to Sherwood's aid after a group robbed him of his MP3 player and choked him unconscious.

The petite girl, who police officers said looked about 12, said she didn't want to go with Sherwood but he put an arm around her and led her away.

A runaway from a group home who'd never been downtown alone before, she repeatedly asked him to go back to the Rideau Centre.

But Sherwood kept saying he had "something cool" to show her and they walked for hours.

Then he took her to a park, grabbed her by the hair and put his tongue in her mouth. He pulled off her pants and raped her while biting her on the neck, where his DNA was later found.

"Get off me, do you know how old I am?" the girl yelled.

"Age doesn't matter to me, baby," she reported him saying.

She fled - with Sherwood following and asking for oral sex - to RCMP officers on Parliament Hill. She was shaken and scared, officers testified.

Loignon was impressed by the girl's recall but conceded it was a "contradiction" that a police officer saw her holding hands and laughing with Sherwood as they left a Tim Hortons.

"She may have been going along with the accused because she felt she had no other option," Loignon said.

The girl alleges the attack by Sherwood was the second time she was raped that night. Another man will go on trial in January.

Sherwood is back in court Oct. 3.

Last February he pleaded guilty to touching a woman's crotch aboard the No. 142 bus in an incident the Crown, which sought jail time, called "degrading."

A judge handed Sherwood two years of probation, saying he needed psychiatric help.

A probation officer had concluded he was likely to reoffend because of his schizophrenia, pot use and lack of a job, social skills or support.