A woman wept as she told a court how she fought for her life when she was grabbed from behind and brutally raped in an alleyway at night.

“I didn’t stop fighting the whole time,” she said. “I wasn’t going to go down without a fight.

"I think my strength has come from nowhere, thinking of my children to make sure I didn’t die.”

Polish-born Marcin Gorniak, 30, of High Street, Chatham, is on trial at Maidstone Crown Court accused of raping her.

A jury was told the woman, in her early 30s, had been out for the evening with friends but became separated from them after they left a club in Chatham in the early hours of July 28 last year.

She said in evidence she saw a girl crying and walked her into the High Street. She did not have her phone or any money, so she then went to get help.

While in Rochester Street near the railway station a man she claimed was Gorniak approached her, followed by one of his friends. She said she believed they were Russian but they were Polish.

Admitting she was “six or seven” drunk on a scale of one to 10, she said the man asked if she was OK and where she was going.

“I remember them saying they were going home,” she told the jury of seven men and five women. “He said he would walk with me.”

But the man and his friends went in a different direction. The woman said she went to knock on a door near Corkwell Street and then went into an alleyway to go around the back.

Without any warning, the man pounced.

“I was trying to grab his arm,” she said. “I was just trying to get him off me. I couldn’t breathe. I don’t remember the exact things I did because I was terrified.

“I was grabbed around my mouth and nose while he whispered in my ear. As I went to the floor, I banged my head quite hard.

“I was grabbed around my mouth and nose while he whispered in my ear. As I went to the floor, I banged my head quite hard" - alleged rape victim

“I started screaming. He was punching and kicking me in the stomach, which winded me.”

The woman, who was wearing a dress, said her attacker pulled her underwear to one side and raped her. Her breast was injured where he grabbed her and she suffered other bruises.

“I got him off me and ran for my life,” she said.

She later attended an identification procedure. She picked out two men, but not Gorniak.

The trial continues.