A husband who claimed he was innocent of rape beca

A husband who claimed he was innocent of rape because he thought his victim was his wife has been jailed for five years.

Michael Collins, 44, said he only realised who his 25-year-old victim was when she turned around as he hugged her.

The training officer, who had drunk 14 pints of Guinness with vodka chasers at a party, said: ‘It was all a ghastly mistake I would not have made if I were sober.

‘

But the court heard Collins wife’, Samantha was ‘skinny’, white, and with short hair while his victim was mixed race, weighed up to 17 stone and had an ‘Afro’ hairstyle.

She fled into the street without her knickers after the incident as Collins chased her at knifepoint.

He went home wearing her shorts to his wife of 13
years and their three children, Inner London Crown Court heard.

Judge Jonathan van der Werff told him: ‘No doubt it would not have happened were you not so drunk that night.

‘The fact you were drunk does not afford any real mitigation.

‘You went in that bedroom which you will accept you may well have thought was one you were assigned.

‘You had sexual intercourse, very briefly obviously, because as soon as she woke up you stopped.

‘The fact you would not have done it had you been sober makes no difference to her.

‘

She told the court she had gone to the bedroom at the party in south east London the early hours of October 27 last year.

‘I was drunk at the time.

I opened my eyes and I saw Mick laying on top of me,’ she recalled.

Initially she said she thought it was her boyfriend, but added: ‘I realised it was Mick having sex with me after a few seconds.

‘

Collins chased her with a knife as she fled from the house.

When arrested by police later that day, Collins read a statement prepared by his solicitor.

‘I continue with my clear argument I mistook Miss X for my wife.

I believe I went into the bedroom allocated to us,’ he said.

Collins, of Templars Close, Middleton-on-Sea, West Sussex, had worked as a training officer for gas industry firm Transco.

His wife Samantha burst into tears and sobbed continuously after a jury of five women and seven men found him guilty of rape.

Roger Offenbach, defending, said: ‘It is a tragedy and an end to a very useful life.

‘

He had been bailed to live at an address at (35) Raleigh Road, Penge, southeast London, for the duration of the trial.

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