A MARRIED man who raped a prostitute at knifepoint was jailed for six years yesterday.

Geoffrey Chapman, 46, from South Bank, Middlesbrough, remained impassive as he was convicted and jailed for the attack on the 19-year-old heroin addict.

He had picked her up in Middlesbrough's red light district, threatening her with a 12in knife before raping her on the town's Riverside Industrial Estate.

Chapman had just dropped off his wife and her sister to play bingo, before drinking six pints of beer at his local club, Teesside Crown Court heard.

The girl gave evidence that she wrote down his car registration in eye liner on the back of her left hand and reported the attack to police.

Police were loading his car on to a trailer for examination after the rape report when a sharp-eyed officer spotted Chapman among a watching crowd.

At Chapman's home, officers recovered a black handled kitchen knife that she had described.

The girl said Chapman had threatened her, saying that she did not want to end up like Vicky Glass, 21, a Middlesbrough prostitute who was murdered in 2000. Her killer has never been caught.

Jobless Chapman, of Oliver Street, South Bank, who denied he had a knife, had a history of using Middlesbrough prostitutes when his wife of 18 years played bingo.

Chapman will have to register as a sex offender for life.

Judge Mr Justice Holland told him: "Rape is always serious but this rape was aggravated by the display of a knife, aggravated by the bullying exploitation of an inevitably trusting prostitute, and because you deliberately subjected her to unprotected sex and all that implies in terms of risk and her understandable revulsion."