A rapist whose victim feared she’d fallen pregnant from the assault swore from the dock as he was jailed for almost five years.

Anthony Shirley, 30, appeared to accuse his victim, who was left so traumatised by the assault that she took an overdose within hours of it happening, of ‘chatting s***’ and muttered ‘drop dead’ from behind the glass of the dock.

Sentencing, Recorder Samantha Presland told Shirley that there was minimal credit for his plea of guilty on the morning of the trial – as the victim, who feared that her child was Shirley’s before it was established he was not the father, had been ‘basically accused of lying’.

“She is lying,” the remorseless rapist said from the dock. “F***ing bull****.”

Laura Blackband, prosecuting, told Oxford Crown Court on Tuesday (March 7) that Shirley had launched his attack after being invited to his victim’s home to smoke cannabis.

As he was then living at the homeless hostel in Luther Street, Oxford, the victim made up the sofa bed for him.

Ignoring the sofa, he said they had to smoke the drugs he’d brought in her bedroom.

He kept pawing at her, despite her attempts to move his hand off her leg. When she eventually slapped him in the face, he slapped her back.

He was said to have pinned the woman to the bed as he carried out the rape. A knotted condom, in which Shirley’s DNA was found, was later discovered discarded down the side of the bed.

After the defendant left the flat in the morning, the distraught victim was said to have taken an overdose and penned a suicide note. Police officers found her that evening in a field, the court heard.

Shirley was arrested a day after the alleged assault and denied being at the woman’s flat on the night – despite CCTV tracking his movements through town.

In a moving impact statement read from the witness box, the victim said that although she had recovered physically from the attempt on her life ‘emotionally I was a complete mess’.

She no longer trusted men and felt like, if her own son were to commit such a sexual assault, she would be the ‘first one to shop him to the police’ as she understood what rape did to a victim both emotionally and physically.

The woman said speaking to her son – still only an infant – about rape was something she should never have to do. “I know it’s something, one day, I need to make him aware of.”

The court heard that two years after the rape in 2019, the home in Bicester where Shirley was then living with a partner was raided. Inside the property, was found 32g of cannabis and a phone containing messages consistent with him supplying the class B drug to friends and associates.

Shirley, of Luther Street, Oxford, pleaded guilty to rape and, on a separate occasion, possession with intent to supply a class B drug.

He was jailed for four years and 10 months on Tuesday by Recorder Presland.

In mitigation, Terence Boulter said his client had children of his own, struggled with his mental health and had spent three years on bail awaiting the outcome of the case.

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