A 24-year-old man is facing a lengthy jail sentence after a jury returned a unanimous verdict finding him guilty of raping a sleeping woman at a party.
Lee Patrick had denied taking advantage of the 22-year-old woman while she was asleep, intoxicated through consumption of alcohol and drugs and incapable of giving consent.
Patrick, from Methil, Fife, was convicted of rape at the High Court in Livingston on Thursday after the jury rejected his defence that he had not had sex with the victim.
He was remanded in custody and told his name would be added to the Sex Offenders’ Register with immediate effect and that Scottish Ministers would be informed of his conviction to bar him from working with vulnerable groups
During Patrick’s trial, the court heard evidence from another guest at the party who witnessed Patrick having sex with the unconscious woman and told him he was a “dirty b*****d”.
When the woman eventually wakened and heard the eye witness laughing at her plight she asked Patrick: “What the f*** is going on?’
As he grabbed her neck and tried to kiss her she told him: “No” and went through to a bedroom to tell a friend he had raped her.
The woman, who can’t be identified for legal reasons, claimed she was “just tipsy” when she fell asleep on the sofa in the living room of a house in Leven, Fife, after a night out. She also took ecstasy at the party on 13 October 2018.
The former hotel worker said she thought she was dreaming when she woke several times to find the accused raping her. She said she “froze” initially.
She told the jury: “I tried to speak but couldn’t verbalise anything. I could open my mouth but couldn’t say anything. It felt like I had pins and needles all over my body and I was like a dead weight.”
She said Patrick became more and more aggressive and that she tried to stop him, adding: ““He moved backward and said something like ‘come on’. I stood up and he grabbed the back of my neck and tried to pull me in to kiss him and I said ‘No’. I said something along the lines of ‘What the f*** is going on?’
She said she could hear a man watching them from an armchair in the corner of the room laughing.
On her way home at 7.10am she sent a text to a university friend saying: “Just woke up to some actual creep trying to have sex with me. Cool!”
She explained: “I often try and make light of the situation so it was done in a sarcastic way alluding to the fact that it’s obviously not cool.”
About a week later she disclosed she had been raped in a note to her dance teacher which said: “He whispered something in my ear, that’s how I knew it was him.”
Judge Simon Collins called for background reports before passing sentence at Edinburgh High Court on 6 October. He remanded Patrick in custody until then.
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