A late night predator has been found guilty of raping a drunken Christmas party-goer who he ‘swooped’ as she stumbled out of a club.

Muarug Gebremical posed as a Good Samaritan and pretended to be helping the woman to get a lift home as he steered her back to his flat nearby.

He was seen on CCTV hanging around a row of nightclubs in the centre of Torquay at 3.30 am six days before Christmas in 2021 and approaching the woman when he realised she was vulnerable and alone.

Within minutes, he had raped her and she had managed to escape from his room and run into the street where she shouted for help and was given refuge by a neighbour.

Gebremical, aged 34, now of Lisson Grove, Plymouth, denied rape but was found guilty by a jury at Exeter Crown Court. He will be sentenced later by Judge Anna Richardson, who ordered a report from the probation service to assess his level of dangerousness.

Mr Lee Bremridge, prosecuting, said Gebremical had just left another club in Torwood Street, Torquay, on December 19, 2021, when he spotted the woman, who had become separated from friends who she was partying with.

He was seen on CCTV to approach and walk with her away as she tried to phone a friend to ask for a lift. He took over the call, ostensibly to give directions, but continued to lead her back to his bedsit in Warren Road.

The woman gave a video-recorded interview to police the day after the attack in which she said: 'I did not know his name. He swooped in on me after I left the club. I don’t know if he followed me out. 

'I must have stumbled out of the club and he just swooped in. It seemed like he was trying to help but instead he lured me back to his house.'

She said he followed her as she tried to find a taxi and tried to put his arm around her. He pushed her onto the bed when he got her into his room but she repeatedly told him no.

She said: 'I remember his face close to mine and his smell. I remember knocking on a neighbour’s window and telling them I had been raped. They let me stay in there.'

Gebremical told the jury the woman had not only consented but been an enthusiastic partner until she suddenly got up and left his house. He said he had been in Britain for eight years and at the house for six months.

He said: 'She participated in sex. She was happy. Afterwards she started dressing herself and she got angry and complaining I had raped her. I tried to make her understand it was not rape.

'I gave her a simple explanation of what happened but she would not listen and she ran out of the room.'