Seven years for intruder rapist

A judge told Dylan Wimsey that a probation report shows he poses a high risk of harm to others and re-offending.

“You deliberately targeted the flat of the woman that night and your commission of this offence in the circumstances is extremely concerning,” said the judge, Recorder Stephen Riordan, QC.

He described the 51-year-old victim as “a simple soul, vulnerable and living alone.”

Wimsey, of Chaucer Grove, Leigh, denied rape but was convicted by a Liverpool Crown Court jury. He claimed he went to her flat for cannabis and they had consensual sex as they had done before.

The court heard the victim was getting for bed when she heard knocking at her front door. Looking out of her bathroom window she saw Wimsey, who was asking about another man. She told him he did not live there and to go home. But Wimsey, who had taken drink and drugs, scaled the side of the Leigh home and got in through a window after stacking one wheelie bin on top of another.

The woman began screaming and she managed to grab her mobile and run outside. While speaking to a 999 operator he punched her in the face and took her phone which smashed. She decided to go home but he followed, hit her and pushed her onto her bed. She squirted lemon juice in his face but he hit her again, smothered her screams with his hand and raped her.

The judge told Wimsey that he was physically well developed and his victim has been left “devastated” and feeling unsafe in her own home. He took into account that Wimsey had been seriously sexually assaulted when he was 12 by a teenager who received a three-year sentence of detention. “I heard evidence from your mother as to how your behaviour has deteriorated quite dramatically since that time. I bear that in mind but it does not excuse it but puts it in some sort of context.”

Steven Swift, defending, said Wimsey, whose previous convictions are largely for dishonesty, is mentally immature and was only 17 at the time of the rape.