A PERVERT has been jailed for 10 years for raping a 78-year-old Gravesend woman in her home - just two days after being released on bail.

Joe Street, 20, was sentenced to a decade behind bars at Maidstone Crown Court yesterday (Jan 7) for the “horrific” assault and rape of the pensioner.

The attack on the elderly woman took place on June 14 – two days after being released on bail on charges of burglary and assaulting two police officers.

On sentencing Street, Judge Jeremy Carey said: “This was a grave offence in which you frightened and terrified your victim, which could be heard in the 999 call.

"When asked by police about this you described the allegations as disgusting. That was the one shed of reality to come from you during this disturbing and highly traumatising case, this was disgusting.”

A jury took just 10 minutes to unanimously find him guilty during the trial in November after hearing the victim’s account of what happened.

The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, said Street had turned up at her home looking like "a zombie" and clutching two beers, claiming to have already drunk 13 cans.

She was assaulted and followed into an upstairs toilet by Street who rifled through her cardigan pockets to search for a mobile phone before he fled the house.

She reluctantly let him in but he attacked her after complaining about a lack of sex due to being locked up for a year.

Investigating officer, Detective Constable Zoe Traynor of Kent Police’s Public Protection Unit, said: "It was an horrific sexual crime and the speed of which the jury came to its decision only serves to highlight the evidence presented to them in this case.”

During his short trial Street, who denied rape, sat calmly with arms folded as his victim relived her ordeal via the court's videolink.

He also warned a dock officer that he would be tempted to "bolt" from the courtroom if giving evidence from the witness box.

In the end, he offered no evidence in his defence, claiming only that he could not remember what happened.

Street, formerly of Jenkins Dale, Chatham, was also sentenced to 12 months in jail for burglary and six months in total for two attacks on police officers, all to run concurrently.

He will serve a minimum of five years in custody, and has been put on extended licence for six more years and added added to the Sex Offenders Register for life.