A former student who repeatedly raped two women and sexually assaulted a third while they were sleeping could be handed a life sentence.
Connor Yaxley, 30, was accused of raping one woman three times between December 2017 to 2019, a second woman twice between April 2018 and August 2020 and sexually assaulting a third woman in August 2020.
The women said they were asleep when the assaults happened, and the two rape victims said Yaxley told them he had been dreaming when he had sex with them.
He denied the charges but yesterday, after a nine-day trial at Norwich Crown Court, a jury found him guilty on all accounts.
Judge Andrew Shaw told Yaxley, a film studies student at the time of the attacks, that he had been convicted of ‘extremely serious’ sexual offences.
But he said he was not sentencing him immediately as he needed a pre-sentence report to find out more about him.
Judge Shaw said he had ‘the gravest of concerns’ about Yaxley and would be considering not just a ‘very lengthy custodial sentence’, but also ‘potentially a life sentence’.
Yaxley of Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, was remanded into custody before sentencing on November 1.
The first woman told the court that Yaxley had used the excuse he was dreaming when he had sex with her more than once.
She said that on one occasion Yaxley told her that he had accidentally penetrated her while they were both asleep.
The other rape victim said in a recorded police interview that she had twice woken up from ‘deep sleep’ to find Yaxley having sex with her.
Giving evidence in court from behind a screen, the woman said it happened the second time after she had got into bed with Yaxley and had told him that she did not want sex.
The woman said she had been prone to sleeping deeply, and took time to wake up and understand what was happening.
When she came round, she realised that Yaxley had been having sex with her without consent.
She told the court: ‘I thought he was asleep, and woke him up and asked him why? He said he didn’t remember and must have done it in his dreams, and that he was so sorry and did not know what he was doing.’
Under cross examination, she was asked if she had accepted his explanation at the time that the sex had happened while he was asleep. She replied: ‘Then, I accepted it.’
On a third occasion, she said she had woken up to find Yaxley fiddling intimately with her and that she had then consented to sex.
She went on to say that she had only come to realise that his actions had been wrong when she spoke to a friend.
Prosecutor Andrew Thompson said that Yaxley told police in an interview that he would do things ‘without knowing because he was dreaming at the time’.
Yaxley also told officers that he was prone to having bad dreams, and had woken up to find that he was having sex with one of the women.
The court heard how he had also sexually assaulted a third woman by touching her intimately as she slept on a chair at his home.
Mr Thompson described the alleged incident in August 2020 as ‘unwanted touching that was clearly sexual’.
The prosecutor said that a person could only consent to sex by choice and if they had the freedom and capacity to make that choice.
He added that a sleeping woman – ‘the same as if it were an unconscious woman’ – could not consent to sexual conduct that took place while she is asleep.
Mr Thompson told the jury that when Yaxley ‘wants it, he will not take no for an answer’.
He added: ‘This is a person that can’t stop himself and sees sleeping women as no reason to reign himself in. We say that is the behaviour of a rapist.’
Yaxley was studying at the University of Suffolk, based at East Coast College in Great Yarmouth, when the attacks happened.
He insisted in court that all sex he had with the women was consensual, saying that they were ‘up for it’.
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