A man has appeared in court this morning to deny raping a Dover woman on Christmas Day last year.

Romanian George Hirjanu, 25, was arrested last month and accused of the sex attack in Pencester Court, Dover.

Speaking through an interpreter, Hirjanu was asked to enter his plea to the rape charge.

He told Judge Adele Williams, sitting at Canterbury Crown Court: “I am not guilty because I did not know.”

Hirjanu, of no fixed address, was then remanded in custody until the next hearing in January.

An arrest warrant was issued after the woman, in her 20s, alleged she had been attacked in the early hours of December 25.