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Mark Yeates, 51, hit the woman on the head with the handle of the axe before dragging her upstairs dazed and dizzy. He then taped her hands and feet together before raping her as she vomited and begged him to stop, a court heard.

The brute warned his victim not to call the police and moaned that “I’ll get 10 years” for this after the attack. But he was sentenced to 12 years at Preston Crown Court yesterday, with an additional eight years on licence.

Sentencing Yeates, Judge Ian Unsworth QC said: “You subjected her to a truly horrific and brutal sexual attack.

“You threatened to strike her again or gag her if she cried. She was in effect held as a prisoner in her own home. It’s where she should have felt safe but that could not have been further from the truth. You treated her and her body with utter contempt.”

The court heard how the victim knew her attacker but she did not want to speak to him when he arrived outside her house, Lancs Live reports. She asked Yeates, who smelt of alcohol, to go away.

But when the woman left her front door an hour later for work, Yeates jumped over a neighbour’s fence to ambush her.

Mark Goode, prosecuting, said the woman pleaded but finally relented and said Yeates could come inside for five minutes.

Once inside the house in Lancashire, they stood face to face and the woman noticed Yeates had both hands behind his back – but at the time did not think this was unusual.

But she then felt a sudden pain and initially believed he had grabbed her by the neck. In fact, he had hit her on the head with the handle of the axe he was hiding behind her back, knocking her to the floor and causing her to bleed. He then dragged her towards the stairs by pulling her coat and tried to order her to walk up but she was still too dizzy.

Yeates continued to pull her up the stairs and forced her onto the bed where she vomited in fear and distress. Mr Goode told the court the woman at this point felt like “she was used like a rag doll”.

He continued: “She knew what he was going to do and was repeatedly saying ‘no’ to him.”

The court heard how Yeates warned her to be quiet and the woman recalled that feared she would be killed if she did not stop shouting.

The predator briefly stopped the attack to find the house keys to lock the front door and move the woman’s phone out of reach. He then returned and proceeded to rape the terrified woman. After the attack, the woman begged Yeates to let her go to the toilet as a result of the pain he had caused, at which point she secretly called 999 and contacted friends and family members for help.

Mr Goode told the court: “The complainant said she felt the defendant was loving doing this. In her words, ‘he were loving it, literally loving it’. Yeates then stood at the top of the stairs smoking a cigarette and the woman said at this point she wanted to kill him and considered pushing him down. Yeates told her he “couldn’t believe what he had done and knew he would get 10 years.”

The court heard how Yeates left the home with a warning not to call the police, unaware of the fact that had already happened. When officers arrived, the woman was sitting wrapped in duvets physically shaking and with blood visible on her jeans. Her friends soon arrived and showed the officer a picture of the man which was circulated around the police. He was arrested outside his home having spent time hiding in bushes and appeared to be wet with mud-stained clothes. Yeates told officers that he wouldn’t need a solicitor as he was “100% wrong”.

In a victim personal statement, the woman said she had always been a strong and independent woman but believed Yeates had broken her. She said she no longer faced seeing people, did not feel safe in her own home, and was unable to talk about what had happened. She added: “My only hope is that one day I can move on with my life”.

Defending, Steven Swift asked for maximum credit for the early guilty plea which Judge Ian Unsworth QC said agreed to be appropriate. That included guilty pleas to three counts of rape and one count assault occasioning actual bodily harm. Mr Swift said Yeates had expressed regret and shame as soon as he was arrested and continued to do so.

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