It's every mother's nightmare. One night last May, Juliann Moore bid goodbye to her teenage daughter Rhiana as she headed into her church youth group and never saw her alive again.

After the 14-year-old was found murdered, stabbed to death by 33-year-old Ze Selassie, investigators discovered she'd been leading a secret double life.

Her family knew her as a quiet and shy girl, the studious type who was on the honour roll at CedarBridge Academy and loved fashion and dancing.

But unbeknown to them, Rhiana was engaged in a secret sexual relationship with Selassie, a convicted rapist 18 years older than her, and was around seven months pregnant by him.

The pair called and texted each other thousands of times in the year before her death, but were always careful to meet in secret.

As prosecutor Michael McColm put it to the jury during Selassie's trial: "No-one knew of that relationship.

"No-one knew. It was a relationship based on deceit exercised by him and Rhiana to keep it secret, to keep the texts secret, to keep the meetings secret. No-one saw them on their secret rendezvous."

Rhiana also appears to have been conducting a romance with another male who was not identified during the court case.

She urged him to come and see her just days before she died, telling him: "I promise I will keep you happy for a long time. I will be your slave if you want me to."

Mrs. Moore, 46, noticed her daughter was putting on weight in the weeks before her death, but told the Supreme Court trial she did not know of Rhiana's trysts with Selassie or that she was pregnant.

The mother's grief and shock was palpable as she testified for the prosecution.

She told how she uncovered news of Rhiana's contact with Selassie during the frantic search to find her missing daughter.

Then the dread news came that Rhiana's body had been found stabbed 18 times and dumped in water at Blue Hole Hill nature reserve.

The anguished mother told the jury how Rhiana was born on Christmas Day 1993, the first of her two daughters with ex-husband Rohan Moore, a former Police officer.

Known affectionately as "Rhi," the young girl attended Whitney Institute before moving on to CedarBridge Academy in 2007.

"She was a very bright student, an honours student," her mother recalled with pride. "She loved school and was looking forward to going to university when she finished CedarBridge."

Of her young daughter's personality, she said: "Rhiana was very shy until you got to know her.

"Very quiet, very pleasant, very sweet, did her chores when I asked. Very respectful to people."

Rhiana danced during the Sunday church services she and her mother attended at Radnor Road Christian Fellowship.

She was also, according to her mother, never without her cell phone, which she was given as a present the year she finished Whitney.

It became clear during the trial why Digicel records show she made and received in the region of 96,000 calls and texts in the year before her death.

Of those, Rhiana called or texted Selassie more than 11,000 times, with many of the messages indicating the sexual relationship they were engaged in and her ensuing pregnancy.

The pair had also been in touch via an Internet social networking site.

Mrs. Moore told the trial she knew her daughter had "crushes" on boys, but believed crushes were all they were and she did not get to know the boys' names.

She also explained that she noticed her daughter was gaining weight around six weeks before her death.

"I just asked her "Rhiana, are you having sex?' She said 'no Mommy, no, if I was I would tell you.' I said 'very good, you need to continue to focus on school'," she recalled.

However, at the same time as telling her mother not to worry, the teenager was in touch with Selassie discussing her advancing pregnancy and worrying her mother would notice and take her to the doctor.

On Selassie's account of events, it seems Rhiana got pregnant soon after they began sleeping together in late 2007.

Both agreed they did not want the child and in the months before her death, Selassie suggested they should have sex in a bid to rid of it.

He admitted during his trial that this was a lie told in order to get the youngster into bed.

Rhiana confessed she was feeling sick, tired and like she was losing her mind and contemplated throwing herself down the stairs.

Meanwhile she was also in touch with the other male, urging him to come and see her in the days before her death.

She told him: "All I need is someone to show me that they love me and show me that they care when I'm upset like now."

On the night Rhiana disappeared, her mother took her by car to a youth group meeting at their church.

She watched as Rhiana headed in through the door, clad in a favourite jacket she'd bought on a school trip to Spain.

It was the last time she saw her alive. Unbeknown to her mother, Rhiana told youth leader Jenna Bean that she did not need a lift home as usual that night.

She claimed she was being picked up by an aunt and taken to a sleepover but instead, she met Selassie. Her murderer protested his innocence until he was convicted by a Supreme Court jury yesterday, and his motive for butchering his young lover and their unborn child remains the subject of speculation.

He admitted on the witness stand that he had a "raw sexual desire" for the girl and treated her "like a piece of meat" in order to gratify his sexual urges.

But he insisted he took her home safely the night she disappeared.

His own lawyer, John Perry QC, acknowledged in his closing speech to the jury that Selassie's relationship with the girl was "repugnant" by the standards of any decent person.

"For Mrs. Moore and her family and friends it must have been a dreadful experience. They deserve your sympathy, and rightly so," he said of his client's testimony.

Prosecutors believe the convicted rapist killed his young lover out of fear that Rhiana's pregnancy would be discovered and he would be jailed for having unlawful carnal knowledge of the under-age girl.

A cool and composed Selassie branded this idea as "ridiculous" during his testimony.

Whatever his motive, the Police aware of his past had him in their sights soon after Rhiana's body was found.

He was arrested at his home in St. David's within hours and charged with premeditated murder five days later.

The case may have been solved quickly with Selassie convicted and jailed for life yesterday but it will take Rhiana's friends and family forever to come to terms with their loss. Mrs. Moore declined to speak after the verdict yesterday.

However, she told the Bermuda Sun days after Rhiana's death: "I didn't go anywhere without my two girls.

"The three of us were more than family we were so close. Now it feels like a piece of me has gone. A part of us, of what we had built, has gone. We were a team and I still can't believe she won't be part of that anymore."

Speaking to this newspaper after his daughter's death, Rhiana's father Rohan Moore who has lived and worked in Barbados as a real estate agent since he and Juliann divorced in the year 2000 said: "I was totally devastated. It's very, very difficult.

"It's the last news you want to hear. Not knowing the circumstances made it even harder."