A MAN who raped a woman while she slept has been jailed for five years.

Carl Heald had denied the offence, telling a jury the pair had sex but it was consensual and she had enjoyed the experience.

But the jury found the shaven-headed brute guilty of a single count of rape. Teesside Crown Court heard that the victim had gone upstairs to a bedroom to sleep at a house party on March 8 last year.

She had consumed a significant amount of alcohol and had also taken drugs.

Prosecuting, Jo Kidd said: “The defendant had sex with her when initially she was asleep. She froze and was crying as it happened.”

In a statement the victim said she now felt uncomfortable when she was alone in her house. She said she had seen 33-year-old Heald around town on a number of occasions since the attack and it “knocked her sick”.

She said: “It causes me to shake and I feel terrified. I am still not in a relationship since the incident and I would rather stay at home where I know I am safe.”

Heald, of Tithebarn Road, Stockton, has a number of previous convictions for drugs and dishonesty-type offences.

However Richard Herrmann, mitigating, said none of his convictions had any relevance to the rape.

The Recorder of Middlesbrough, Judge Simon Bourne-Arton told him: “You knew well what you were doing. She did not know because she was asleep and that made her vulnerable.”

Heald will register as a sex offender on an indefinite basis as a result of his conviction.