A MAN who raped a drunk teenage girl in his Weymouth flat has been jailed for seven years.

Richard Peter Sturmey, aged 20, was convicted of the sex attack on the 16-year-old girl following a trial at Dorchester Crown Court last month.

Before the trial he admitted three separate offences of having sex with a girl under the age of 16, which all related to another teenage girl.

David Richards, prosecuting, told the court that the 16-year-old girl was staying over at Sturmey’s flat in Carlton Road North on the night of June 15 last year and had been drinking to such an extent that she was sick before going to bed.

The girl woke in the night to find Sturmey standing over her and he forced himself upon her.

Mr Richards said: “He was perhaps affected by drink but was pretty well sober and had his wits about him.”

He added that there had been consensual kissing between Sturmey and the girl earlier in the evening but she had not consented to the sexual intercourse.

Mr Richards said the charges of having sex with a girl under the age of 16 related to another girl whom Sturmey first had sex with in January 2008, when she was 14 and Sturmey aged 17.

He said the three counts covered the pair having sexual encounters on a number of occasions up to her 16th birthday in December 2009.

Mark Ruffell, mitigating, said that since his conviction Sturmey had accepted his guilt on the rape charge and showed remorse for his actions. He said: “He has accepted the jury’s verdict and accepted that the evidence proved she didn’t agree to having sexual intercourse and due to her intoxicated state was not in a fit state to give her consent.”

Judge Roger Jarvis told the defendant: “These girls’ lives have been damaged dramatically by your actions and your actions have also fractured each of these young women’s relationship with their friends and families.”

Judge Jarvis sentenced Sturmey to six years in prison for the rape offence and a further year for the three offences of having sex with a girl under the age of 16.