A man convicted of raping a virtual stranger on a first date has been told to expect a significant prison sentence.
A jury heard Thomas Taylor’s victim had spent a pleasant day on a long walk with him in Forfar and sharing a pizza at her home.
She said she let him stay overnight at her flat because he had been drinking and she did not want him to risk him drink-driving home to Dundee.
She made up a makeshift bed for him on her living room sofa but Taylor repaid her kindness by raping her in the middle of the night as she slept on another couch, Livingston High Court was told.
The woman, who had not been drinking, told how she woke to find him having intercourse with her without her consent.
She said he left her home abruptly after she woke and challenged him.
Relatives told of her extreme distress when she revealed over the phone what he had done to her.
She told her sister she “just lay there frozen” and was “unable to move” when she woke.
In court, she said she immediately asked him “What are you doing?” and he stopped.
Jury rejects defence
Taylor, 40, denied sexually assaulting the woman and lodged a special defence of consent.
Giving evidence in his own defence, he admitted being aroused during the incident on October 11 2020 but claimed he stopped short of having intercourse with her.
Jurors threw out his defence and found him guilty of seizing and holding her on the body and raping her to her injury while she was asleep and incapable of giving or withholding consent.
Jurors deleted a further allegation he continued to assault her after she woke.
Taylor, of Rosebank Place, Dundee, was remanded in custody until sentencing in Edinburgh on March 26.
Judge Alistair Watson called for a background report and told Taylor his name would be added to the sex offenders register with immediate effect.
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