A CONVICTED criminal has been sent back to prison for 12 years after raping an asylum seeker and claiming she couldn’t denounce him ‘because she was illegal’.

The man, 52, raped the 26-year-old, from Venezuela, after she responded to an online advertisement asking for a cleaner to work at the man’s cafe on Calle San Pablo, in Alicante.

The woman was asked to take some boxes up into the cafe’s loft space, when the man grabbed her ‘by the neck’ and threw her ‘to the floor’.

Strangling her, he said: “Don’t shout, no one will hear you, and anyway I have a knife and will kill you.”

CAUGHT: The events happened on April 15 last year

After raping her the man claimed the woman would not be able to denounce him because she was ‘an illegal immigrant’. He also said that if she married him, he would grant her legal ‘papers’.

The girl managed to fire off frantic WhatsApp message to friends, who took her to the police station for an immediate denouncement for sexual aggression.

The man turned out to have already spent 20 years in prison for robbery, sexual abuse and ilegal capture, and was sentenced back to jail just one year after being released.

The convicted rapist has been ordered to pay €20,360 for physical, psychological and moral damages after the woman was left in treatment for ‘chronic post-traumatic stress’.

