Drunken man raped ‘virtually unconscious’ woman in front of her daughter

But after he had initially denied raping his victim, John Harman finally pleaded guilty on the day of his trial.

And at Warwick Crown Court Harman, aged 50, of Chanders Road, Warwick, was jailed for five years and ordered to register as a sex offender for life.

Prosecutor Graham Russell said that the woman was raped by Harman earlier this year in her own home while she was heavily under the influence of alcohol.

She had been drinking with a group of people at a bar in Warwick. A young man who was in the bar but had not been drinking was asked to take her home, and he did so, helping her inside and leaving her fully clothed on the sofa in her living room before returning to the bar.

After speaking to the woman’s daughter, he walked her back to the address, but Harman, who had also been in the bar, tagged along and went inside with them.

The daughter wanted her mother taken up to her bedroom, and as the two men helped her up the stairs the woman rememberedHarman touching her innapropriately.

Harman then removed her clothes and told the other man to get out.The young man left and returned to the pub to tell a friend of the woman what was happening. Meanwhile the woman’s daughter saw Harman taking off her mother’s clothes and subjecting her to a sexual assault.

She crawled to the toilet but Harman followed her there and raped her.

Her horrified daughter, who was too frightened to intervene, ran out and phoned her mother’s friend who turned up a short time later to find her still slumped on the toilet, and ordered Harman to leave.

The woman was told by her daughter the following day what had happened, and called the police.

When Harman was arrested he said he had been very drunk, and accepted he had been aroused when he saw her on the bed, but did not know what he did after that.

He entered his guilty plea on the basis that because of how much alcohol he had consumed, he could not remember having any sexual contact with the woman, but accepted the evidence of her daughter.

Mr Russell said that in a victim impact statement the woman said that as a result of the rape she had to undergo tests at a sexual health clinic, and it has put ‘a huge strain’ on her relationship with her partner.

Jailing Harman and banning him from having any contact with his victim, Recorder Mark Wall QC told him: “I bear in mind you’re a man of 50 of previous good character.

“But against that, I have to bear in mind the impact of what you did that night.”