A TEENAGER who broke into a middle-aged woman’s home and punched and raped her has been jailed for seven years.

A judge told 18-year-old Dylan Wimsey that a probation report shows he poses a high risk of causing harm to others and reoffending.

Sentencing him at Liverpool Crown Court today, Friday, Judge Stephen Riordan said: “You deliberately targeted the flat of the woman that night and your commission of this offence in the circumstances is extremely concerning.”

The judge described the 51-year-old victim as ‘a simple soul, vulnerable and living alone’ and said she has been left feeling ‘devastated’ and unsafe in her own home.

Wimsey, of Chaucer Grove, Leigh, denied rape but was convicted by a Liverpool Crown Court jury last month.

He claimed he had gone to her flat in Leigh to get cannabis and they had consensual sex as they had done before, which the victim disputed.

Judge Riordan told Wimsey, who showed no emotion: “I have to consider whether the real reason was to rape her.

“I have decided the evidence is not sufficiently clear.”

The court heard that the victim was getting ready to go to bed in the early hours of December 27 when she heard knocking downstairs at her front door.

She looked out of her bathroom window and saw Wimsey, who was asking about another young man.

She told him that he did not live there and to go home.

But instead Wimsey, who had taken a cocktail of drink and drugs, climbed up the side of the flat in Leigh and through the bathroom window after placing one wheelie bin on top of another.

The woman began screaming and managed to grab her mobile phone and run outside.

While she was speaking to a 999 operator Wimsey punched her in the face and took her phone, which smashed.

She decided to go back home but he followed, hit her and pushed her onto her bed.

She squirted lemon juice in his face but, undeterred, he hit her again, put his hand over her mouth to stop her screaming, pinned her to the bed and raped her.

Upon hearing sirens following the rape, he told her that he was ‘not bothered’ if it was the police.

Judge Riordan described Wimsey as tall, well built and physically well developed.

He said that he took into account Wimsey being seriously sexually assaulted when he was 12 by a 19-year-old, who subsequently 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,” Judge Riordan said.

“I bear that in mind. It does not excuse it but it puts it in some sort of context.”

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

Wimsey was ordered to sign the sex offenders’ register for life.