A British man who raped a sleeping woman after a house party in Australia has been jailed.
Scott Harry Richardson, 25, will spend at least two years and three months behind bars for the attack on a US backpacker in 2015.
The woman fell asleep on a couch before waking to find a man raping her, Sydney’s Downing Centre District Court heard last year.
Richardson pleaded not guilty but was convicted following a 12-day trial.
The court heard Richardson removed the woman’s underwear before raping her twice at a Sydney share house.
When she asked him to stop, he replied: “This is what you want, isn’t it?”
People elsewhere in the house heard her yelling: “I can’t believe this happened. I was raped.”
Richardson testified he jumped on top of a duvet covering the woman after mistaking her for a friend, before realising the error and leaving.
In his sentencing remarks on Wednesday, Judge Chris Hoy said Richardson had made “a disgraceful intrusion”.
“The offender knew from the outset that the victim was not consenting,” he said.
“He forced himself upon her breaching the ordinary and proper boundaries of moral and physical interaction between men and women.”
Richardson, who grew up and attended university in England, was given a maximum sentence of four years and three months. He will be eligible for parole in 2019.
