Nottinghamshire man raped a woman while she slept - and laughed in his trial

Ryan Smith, aged 28, now of HMP Nottingham, denied rape, but was convicted after a three-day trial

Laura Pitman, prosecuting at Nottingham Crown Court said he committed the rape in May 2020 and when Smith realised she was awake he asked why she had pretended to be asleep.

The court heard he jailed for 62 months at Stafford Crown Court in May 2016, after being convicted of sexual offending relating to a child, and taking a child without lawful authority.

He was made subject to notification requirements under the Sex Offenders Act, but breached them in December 2020.

Eddy Leonard, mitigating, said: "I have to accept his previous convictions don't show him in a great light. He does have some support from his mother."

Sentencing, Judge Stuart Rafferty KC told Smith: “You are by a nature a loner – you spend a lot of your time on your own.”

He said a probation report identified deficits in his decision making, problem solving and consequential skills, along with ‘a lack of consideration to others’.

The judge said the rape was not pre-planned, but committed ‘on the spur of the moment’, in ‘very particular circumstances’, because it was ‘simply in your nature to take the risk’.

He said: “You made assumptions you should haven’t have made. You didn’t use force or violence afterwards, but you pretended nothing had happened.

“I saw you while others were giving evidence, you seemed to find things were funny.

“That in itself it seems to me is a reinforcement of the observations that have been made about you by the probation services over the years: you don’t know what is appropriate and inappropriate.”

He ruled Smith poses a threat to women and imposed an extended sentence of five years, with six months to be served concurrently for the breach offences.

Smith will serve at least two thirds of the five years before he is eligible to be considered for release and will be on an extended licence for three years.

He was placed on the sex offenders’ register for life.