A man has been convicted of sexually assaulting a woman while she was sleeping at a house in Motherwell.
Hamilton Sheriff Court heard that when the victim realised what was happening, Colin Gierthy begged her not to tell her mother who was asleep upstairs.
Gierthy, 55, of Mayfield Place, Carluke, denied assaulting the woman in March 2019, but a jury found him guilty after trial this week.
A charge that he caused the woman to be "stupified" by slipping street valium into her drink before molesting her was found not proven.
The woman, who was in her early 30s at the time of the assault, told prosecutor Neil Thomson that she'd "had three or four vodkas, then blank".
She had been sitting on a chair but woke up on a couch and felt Gierthy touching her private parts.
The woman said her underwear had been pulled down and Gierthy appeared to be pulling up his jogging bottoms.
She asked him angrily what he was doing and he replied 'It's not what it looks like'.
The woman told the jury Gierthy put his hands in a praying position and pleaded 'Please don't tell your mum. Please don't tell your mum.'
But she woke her mum and told her what had happened.
Gierthy was thrown out of the house despite his protests that he had done nothing wrong and had only been trying to help the woman upstairs.
In a statement to police, the woman said she woke to find Gierthy kneeling beside the couch in the living room.
She stated: 'I felt I was being touched and realised my pants had been pulled down. I woke up before he got the chance to do any more.
'I asked him what he was doing and pushed him out of the way.'
Cross-examined by Gierthy's lawyer, the woman rejected the suggestion that he had only been trying to pull up her underwear before helping her get to bed.
She told the lawyer: "I've had nightmares ever since this happened. I'm not telling lies."
After the jury's verdict, Sheriff Alasdair MacFadyen called for a criminal justice social work report and deferred sentence until next month.
Gierthy, who had been on bail, was remanded in custody.
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