A 17-YEAR-OLD girl got her own back on her parents after being banned from living at home by trashing their house and stealing thousands of pounds worth of property with the help of four youths, a court heard.

Suspicious neighbours alerted the police after hearing a commotion and seeing people loading up a van at the family's home in Prestwood on June 23, Aylesbury Crown Court heard on Friday.

Paul Mitchell, prosecuting, said police discovered £2,000 damage to carpets and furnishings which had washing products sprayed or poured over them, and £4,000 of electrical equipment stashed in the van.

He said that officers found one of the youths lying in a drunken stupor in the bathroom and the girl and the three others hiding in the attic.

The girl and an 18-year-old man, of High Wycombe, faced sentence for burgling the house and the three other youths, two aged 16, one from Oxford, the other of no fixed abode and a 17-year-old from Chesham, faced sentence for theft.

The teenager could not be named for legal reasons.

They had admitted the offences at an earlier hearing and the 18-year-old man also pleaded guilty to possessing a small unspecified amount of cannabis. The court heard that 18-year-old man was addicted to crack cocaine at the time.

Timothy Ashmole, speaking on the girl's behalf in mitigation, said that what she had done was in revenge for being banned from the house because she had refused to do what her parents had wanted.

The 18-year-old man was sentenced to 21 months in a young offender institution and the girl and the other three youths were made subject of detention and training orders the girl for 18 months, the two 16-year-olds for 12 months and the 17-year-old boy for 10 months.