A CONVICTED rapist who broke into an 85-year-old woman's home and threatened her with a knife has been jailed for almost nine years.

Yesterday, thankfully for the public, this convicted rapist was back behind bars for nearly nine years after his latest sickening attack, on an 85-year-old woman.

When Dean James Robinson was only 17 - nine years ago - he was jailed for raping a young mum in Dove Street, York, forcing her to stay silent by threatening to rape her four-year-old daughter. Yesterday, Robinson was jailed again after breaking into the home of 85-year-old Joan Horsfield, threatening to kill her at knifepoint, and ordering her to remove her underwear. She was terrified she would be raped.

Robinson, now 26, formerly of Welham Road, Norton, and previously of York, was convicted of aggravated burglary after a trial at York Crown Court. He was spared a life sentence only because he did not harm his plucky victim, who stood up to him.

Dean James Robinson, 26, marginally escaped a life sentence after a jury at York Crown Court found him guilty of aggravated burglary.

Elderly Joan Horsfield, of Norton, told how at 2.20am on May 4, she was confronted by a stranger masquerading as a policeman as she was returning from the bathroom.

At knifepoint, he forced her to hand over £300 to £400 which she had saved from her pension for Christmas. He threatened to kill her, then told her to lie on her bed and take off her underwear.

During the trial Mrs Horsfield told the court: "I said 'If I do, you will rape me,'" she told the jury at York Crown Court. "He said: 'No, I won't' and he went."

When she refused to give him money he made her walk through her house with a knife at her back.

At one point he told her: "If you make any noise there will be a dead person here in the morning."

During her ordeal she noticed he had got in by cutting the double-glazed kitchen window out of the wall. He also cut the telephone line.

Prosecuting, David Bradshaw said: "She was a plucky woman who stood up for herself, but she could have been attacked."

Defending, Nigel Shepherd offered no mitigation.

Judge Jim Spencer QC said it was only the fact that he had not harmed the woman that had spared him a life sentence.

He told Robinson: "You have committed a most serious offence.

"You knew that this woman was old, you knew that she would be alone and you went into her house in the middle of the night in order to steal."

He added: "You threatened her and warned her if she didn't comply she would be dead. You asked her the most appalling questions and you said these things despite her age and then you made your getaway with her property."

Robinson had lived at addresses in Bridlington, Foxwood, York, and Middlesbrough earlier this year. His parents live in Norton and he worked for them from time to time.

Robinson was jailed for eight years. In addition, he pleaded guilty to failing to comply with the sex offender's regulations and a dangerous driving offence, committed in May. He was sentenced to six months and three months respectively, to run consecutively.

The court also heard how Robinson, also of Norton, was jailed for seven years in 1996 after breaking into a York woman's home and raping her as her four-year-old daughter slept nearby.

He also threatened to rape the child.

Menace attacked single mum

As a teenager, Robinson was jailed for seven years for raping a single mother in her home as her four-year-old daughter slept nearby

Then 17 years old, Robinson - who at the time could not be named for legal reasons - admitted rape and burglary at the woman's Dove Street home in York.

He was accompanied by an 18-year-old friend, who admitted a charge of burglary.

The youths entered the house by smashing a downstairs window. They were on their way back from a drinking session in the city centre.

The woman, in her 30s, awoke to see the teenagers in her bedroom

Robinson told the woman not to move or he would shoot her.

He then told her he was going to rape her, said he would harm her child and even threatened to attack her with a screwdriver. Her ordeal lasted about 40 minutes.

He used a condom and boasted to his victim that this would prevent her from proving he had carried out the rape. Afterwards, he demanded money from her.

He stole some CDs and stereo equipment, which police later found in a nearby dustbin

The pair ran off when the woman started to fight back.

Sentencing the rapist to seven years and his friend to three years, Judge Arthur Myerson, QC, described the evidence as "horrifying".

He said the rapist had descended to behaviour which was "quite appalling".

"The rape involved an attack on a woman when she was entitled to feel herself secure in her own home in the middle of the night.

"It was an attack in which she was subjected not only to rape, but also to unpleasant sexual indignities by somebody with an overpowering physical superiority at a time she was in bed and defenceless."

Updated: 08:28 Thursday, December 08, 2005