A Great Yarmouth man raped and assaulted women in their sleep

Police said in one case, a woman woke up to see the suspect raping her. Yaxley claimed he couldn’t remember anything and must have been dreaming at the time.

Another woman was raped at his address when she refused to have sex with him, detectives said, and she claimed he had raped her on previous occasions while she slept.

He sexually assaulted the third woman while she slept in an armchair at his home, police added.

The facts took place between 2017 and 2020.

In a victim impact statement read to the court, one woman said: ‘It feels like there’s an ogre on my shoulder all the time, like a phantom fear that’s hard to explain.

“I still can’t sleep all night.”