A DETECTIVE appealed to one or both of the rapists to give themselves up last night.

Appealing directly to the duo, who attacked the 65-year-old widow in her Marton home, Acting Detective Inspector Paul Richardson said: "If you read this I would urge you to come forward; contact Middlesbrough Police.''

The officer says it would be better for the perpetrators of the crime - the extent of which "beggars belief" - to contact him, before he knocks on their doors.

Explaining his unusual appeal, the police officer with 26 years frontline experience, said: "We are doing everything we can possibly do to trace these people.''

Within hours of Cleveland Police making a public appeal for help, the force's incident room received about 20 telephone calls, which was described as "a fairly good response".

The crime has appalled residents of the The Grove, an exclusive, leafy backwater of detached homes set back from the road, behind high garden hedges.

And it has even caused some of the pensioner's neighbours to feel guilty that they neither saw nor heard anything.

Neighbour Penny Sowerby, 43, said: "It's shocked us really. It's frightening to know that it happened so close.

"I feel guilty as I never heard anything. It's a very quiet area and lovely to live in."

Another resident, who did not want naming, commented: "We both work and with these high hedges you don't see an awful lot of people and you don't get to know them. I had to go to work today, and I felt sick. She is a very quiet-living lady."

Another neighbour said: "It's appalling. How would you feel if something like this happened on your doorstep?

A woman neighbour who was too afraid to give her name said: "We're very concerned for the lady and we are going to keep her in our prayers.

"It has worried me greatly. There was a rape in Stokesley a couple of weeks ago. We've never had anything like that around here and now we've had two in a very short time."

Neighbours talked of undesirables using The Grove as a thoroughfare, stealing children's toys left in gardens and scratching cars parked in the street.

Detectives are hoping to speak to the elderly victim over the next few hours. In the meantime, they have appointed a family liaison officer to counsel members of the pensioner's immediate family, who live on Teesside.

Neighbours are only grateful that the widow's granddaughter, who sometimes sleeps over at her doting gran's home, was not there when the duo struck.

Mr Richardson said: "We are dealing with an absolutely horrific attack, especially on someone this age who cannot be safe living in her own home.''