A ‘stinking’ rapist who molested an older woman in her own home raised his little finger after the assault in what appeared to be a ‘pinkie promise’ that she would not call the police.

Rough sleeper Malcolm Plaisted, 35, had been released from a jail sentence for burglary just days before he asked to be let into the victim’s east Oxford home, pulled out a knife part-way through his ‘harrowing’ rape and placed it on the bed beside her.

Sending him down for 11 years at Oxford Crown Court on Thursday afternoon (March 30), Recorder Paul Reid said: “The existence of that knife on her bed at a time when she was being or had just been raped – and it doesn’t matter which, in my judgement – is undoubtedly a threat of violence.

“As she said, she thought you were going to kill her.”

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Grim-faced Plaisted, sitting in the dock wearing a grey tracksuit, stared straight at the judge as Recorder Reid ruled him to be a ‘dangerous’ offender and imposed an extended six year licence period.

During the extended licence period he will be supervised by the probation service and could be recalled to prison.

Plaisted spoke only to confirm his name at the start of the hearing and to tell the judge ‘alright, sweet’ as he left the dock.

By contrast, his victim, who was sitting in the public gallery next to family members and police officers, kept her head bowed throughout the judge’s sentencing remarks.

In a victim impact statement read to the court by prosecutor Jonathan Stone, the woman said she could still remember the smell of her rapist in her flat.

“A dirty smell of feet combined with body odour and stale alcohol,” she said. The lingering stench was so bad that a friend had cleaned the carpets in the room where the rape was committed.

She added: “I can still imagine that smell.”

Summarising the case against the defendant, Mr Stone told the court: “It’s a case involving, we say, a particularly harrowing rape of a mature, very unwell woman in the safety of her own home by a man known to her, who was in possession of a knife.”

Plaisted was said to have been sleeping rough after being released from prison on licence on November 3 – nine days before the sexual assault.

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The night before the rape he had been on Cowley Road and had, on his own admission, taken cocaine.

He knocked at the woman’s door before dawn on November 12 and asked if he could come in for a cup of coffee.

They sat in her sitting room, where as a result of poor mobility she had a bed set up.

Plaisted pushed her to the bed and, unspeaking, began his sexual assault - despite her pleas for him to stop.

In a basis of plea, Plaisted accepted putting a knife on the bed beside her but claimed he had held it to her neck. He accepted she would have been frightened.

When the defendant turned off the lights part-way through the assault, she ‘thought he was going to kill her’. He said he wanted to ‘lie with her’ and the victim took her opportunity to get up from the bed.

Oxford Mail: Malcolm PlaistedMalcolm Plaisted (Image: Thames Valley Police)

Bizarrely, Plaisted told her that ‘if she called the police he would confess to everything’. The woman said she would not call the police, Mr Stone said. “He used his little finger as if to try and make a ‘pinkie promise’.” The victim did not return the gesture.

Plaisted, of no fixed address, pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing to rape. He had 150 offences on his record, which dated back to a robbery in 2002. His record included a number of convictions for knife possession.

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Sentencing, Recorder Reid told the defendant: “No one listening to the outline of the facts of this case and in particular to the victim personal statement made by the complainant could possibly fail to agree with the prosecution description of the offences as a particularly harrowing case of rape.”

He added: “Really, the only mitigation you derive from this most unpleasant incident is the fact that you saved the complainant the additional stress of being cross-examined in court.”

The judge said: “This lady’s house was violated, her life wrecked – one can only hope not permanently.”

Plaisted will be on the sex offender register for life.