A man who snuck into the home of a Peterhead mum and tried to rape her has been sentenced to more than four years in prison.
Ramunas Smitras, 32, subjected the woman to a terrifying ordeal where she woke to find the stranger standing over her bed with his trousers pulled down in the early hours of April 27 2013.
What followed was a shocking attack in which the woman had to fend off Smitras for more than an hour as he attempted to rape her.
The 33-year-old woman – who was 24 at the time of the assault – described her attacker’s actions that day as “so wrong” and that the attack had “stripped every part of me”.
The jury also found Smitras guilty of sexually assaulting a second woman on the town’s Prince Street just hours later.
Sentencing the Lithuanian national today, Sheriff Morag McLaughlin told him: “You subjected these women to a very frightening ordeal.
“You entered the home of one victim – a place she should have felt safe – and you carried out a prolonged assault and intended to rape her.
“Both women have remained traumatised by your behaviour more than 10 years later.”
Accused likely to be deported
Smitras defence advocate Drew McKenzie said his client had to be treated as a first offender who was “only 22 years old at the time of these offences”.
“The offences were are dealing with are almost 10 years old and, in that intervening period, he has committed no further offences,” he added.
Mr McKenzie also criticised a social work report that described his client as “posing a risk of serious harm to women” as “not objective”.
He suggested that the findings of the report “may be because my client continues to deny his guilt”.
The solicitor additionally told the court that, as a Lithuanian national, Smitras would “almost certainly be deported” following the end of any custodial sentence.
During the trial, Smitras’s first victim told the court how she awoke to find him in her bedroom touching her under her duvet.
She then struggled with Smitras before breaking free of his grasp and barricading herself in the bathroom.
The woman then made a bolt for the front door but was again grabbed by Smitras.
“I was really scared. I just remember trying to push him back and there was fighting back and forth and he managed to push me down,” she told the jury.
“He was trying to have sex with me and I was trying hard to stop that from happening.”
The mum-of-two eventually broke free of her attacker and dashed for the door, escaping into the street.
Smitras then left the woman’s home and walked into Peterhead town centre where he grabbed and sexually assaulted a second woman.
The jury heard evidence from a series of witnesses who identified Smitras wearing a distinctive blue jacket and loitering outside his first victim’s home the night before the attack.
They were also shown a report by a police forensics expert today told the jury that a DNA profile found on the neck and jeans of the woman matched Smitras.
Former forensic biologist Linda Muckersie, one of the scientists who led the testing, said it was “approximately one billion times more likely” to be the profile of Smitras than any other man.
The pair struggled in her living room and she ended up on the sofa underneath the man, who she said was trying to rape her.
Smitras – who fled to Germany after being originally charged with the crime – was unanimously cleared of one charge of sexual assault at Peterhead’s Caley Bar, where it was claimed he had repeatedly touched a female customer on the leg.
The woman, who was 20 at the time, claimed Smitras had touched her and asked whether she wanted a drink.
Sheriff McLaughlin told Smitras that due to the gravity of his offences “a significant period of imprisonment is warranted here”.
She sentenced Smitras, whose address was given as HMP Edinburgh, to four years and six months in prison.
However, his sentence was backdated to March 16 last year when Smitras was taken into custody in Germany on a European arrest warrant.
Sheriff McLaughlin also placed Smitras on the sex offenders register for an indefinite period.
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