A convicted rapist who molested a woman he helped to get into her home after she locked herself out has been jailed for 10 years after a judge found he was a danger to women.

Nathan Gifford will have to serve two thirds of the sentence before being considered for parole, and he will be on licence for a further five years.

Judge Adele Williams said the already vulnerable victim had been deeply affected and had made suicide attempts.

“In my judgment, you lack any remorse or insight into your offending,” she said. “On all the evidence before me, I conclude you pose a significant risk of causing serious harm to women by the commission of further offences.”

The 50-year-old predator was in June cleared of rape but convicted of assault by penetration.

The jury heard about similarities between Gifford’s previous rape conviction and the latest offence in taking advantage of two intoxicated women.

In the first, he acted as a taxi driver by offering his victim a lift home after she staggered out of Bliss nightclub in Gillingham on Christmas Eve 2011 and then raped her before “unceremoniously” dumping her in the street.

He denied the offence but was convicted and jailed for eight years in August 2012. He was convicted of having unlawful sex with a girl under 16 in 1995.

He was still on licence for the rape when he committed the latest offence.

The victim had been drinking in October last year when she saw Gifford near her Maidstone house and told him she had locked herself out.

He offered to help and they climbed over garages to get to her back garden, where she had left a spare key under a stone. But after trying it she realised it was for the front door.

A bedroom window was open on the first floor and he climbed onto a flat roof and entered – a decision she later described as “absolutely ridiculous”.

As Gifford helped the woman through a kitchen window he put his hand inside her trousers and sexually assaulted her. Once inside, he was alleged to have pushed her against the sink and raped her.

The victim ran upstairs to her bedroom, telling him to leave, before phoning the police.

The woman had drunk about two bottles of white wine and was still affected by alcohol when the police arrived.

“She was reluctant to give a full account,” said prosecutor Peter Forbes. “She was distressed and said she deserved it.

“She thought she was wrong because she was vulnerable and drunk, and she should not allow herself to be like this.”

She declined a full medical examination, but a DNA sample from her trousers matched Gifford and he was arrested.

Jurors were told that the victim had made two previous rape allegations involving different men.

"I conclude you pose a significant risk of causing serious harm to women" - Judge Adele Williams

Denying both charges, Gifford, of Wrangleden Road, Maidstone, said when the woman climbed in the kitchen window he told her to put her arms around his neck.

“I reached down to the bottom of her bum cheek,” he said. “I took hold of her there. I felt bare flesh. It was a bit tight trying to get her in the window.”

He claimed he may have touched the woman intimately by accident. He denied having intercourse with her.

Gifford’s name will appear indefinitely on the sex offenders’ register for life. He is also barred from working with children or vulnerable adults.