Lee Setford
Lee Setford, a bricklayer from the U.K., will serve five years in prison for rape, but the judge who sentenced him says that he is not "a general danger to strangers."
Judge Michael Mettyear told Setford that, "It's sad to see a man of generally good character in the dock for such a serious offense." He continued:
I do not regard you as a classic rapist. This was a case where you just lost control of normal restraint. You are not the type who goes searching for a woman to rape.
The woman Setford is convicted of raping crashed at his house in Beverley, England, with a female friend after a night out on Feb. 23.
Setford, 29, assaulted the the woman early the next morning. The woman, 24, testified that she woke up to him raping her. Setford claimed she consented to sex.
The jury unanimously found him guilty of rape after deliberating for two and a half hours at a trial late last month.
The judge also spoke specifically about the victim's behavior:
It was almost out of the blue that two girls turned up late at night, very, very drunk, at your home. The victim was the worst for drink out of the two of them. She was completely out of it. I accept that evidence. She was a pretty girl who you fancied. You simply could not resist. You had sex with her.
However, the judge did condemn Setford for not pleading guilty:
"It is a great shame you did not have the courage to say, 'I have made a terrible mistake and I am sorry,'" he told Setford. "That would have made it much easier for her and I could have passed a lighter sentence."
After serving his five-year sentence, Setford will need to register as a sex offender for an "indeterminate" amount of time. He has a previous conviction of battery from 2009, Hull Daily Mail reports.