Ashley Shuck, of Ombersley Road, Worcester, raped pensioner twice before forcing her to drive at knifepoint

The convicted rapist attacked an elderly woman in her own home just three weeks after his release on licence.

Ashley Shuck, of Ombersley Road, Worcester, has been sent back to jail with a life sentence.

Shuck forced his way into the pensioner's home in Kidderminster as she was making breakfast.

He raped her twice and then forced her to drive at knifepoint nearly a hundred miles across the county while she feared he was going to kill her, Worcester Crown Court heard.

The night before, the 24-year-old had attacked and sexually assaulted a young mother as he began a "campaign of rape" lasting over 12 hours, Simon Burns, prosecuting, told the court.

Shuck was given a life sentence with a minimum of ten and a half years before he can apply to the parole board who will make any decision over his release.

At the time of the latest offences, Shuck was being managed by the National Probation Service on licence after his release from prison in May.

Mr Shuck was subject to recall at the time of the offences, his licence having been revoked.

At Worcester Crown Court, Mr Burns said Shuck had been released in May this year halfway through an eight year sentence he was given for raping a teenage girl he grabbed in an underpass in Kidderminster in March, 2012.

On the evening of Saturday, June 17, this year, he was walking past a house in Kidderminster where his first victim, a mother in her late twenties, was out in the front garden as she spent the summer night with her children and a friend.

She invited him in for a drink after they struck up a conversation but he later refused to leave and when she went to sleep on the sofa bed, he attacked her, putting his hand over her mouth until she felt she couldn't breathe.

She fought him off but when she went to get a drink of water he held her head under the tap and sexually assaulted her again, Mr Burns said.

Shuck left at around 5am and was filmed on CCTV as he cycled across Kidderminster to the home of the elderly woman he had "targeted" earlier in the week by asking if he could clean her car.

At about 7am on Sunday, June 18, she was in her nightdress making breakfast when he knocked at the door and claimed he was a gas engineer.

She asked for identification and he "flashed her a provisional driving licence," Mr Burns said.

He pushed her back into her home and raped her twice while he taunted her and shouted at her in a "degrading" attack over 90 minutes.

He took a sharp four inch knife from her kitchen and put his bike into her garden before forcing her into her car, warning her not to alert her friends or he would "stab them in front of her," Mr Burns said.

They set off on the long drive and she tried to think how she could escape because she believed he was going to kill he but could not jump from the car because of mobility problems.

After nearly three hours of driving mainly on country lanes towards Bromyard, past Worcester and towards Malvern, he took her back to Kidderminster.

He got his bike and took the train and was arrested at Worcester Foregate Street Station at just after 8.30pm.

Shuck, previously from Kidderminster but living at the time of the offences in Ombersley Road, Worcester, pleaded guilty to two offences of sexual assault, two of rape and one of kidnap.

In a victim impact statement, the elderly woman said: "He said he was trying to decide what to do with me.

"I knew he was planning to kill me."

She said she did not think she would live long enough to recover fully.

Mr Burns said Shuck was a predatory offender who was "sexually deviant and dangerous" and had shown a degree of "Jekyll and Hyde" behaviour by switching from one extreme to the other.

He had previous convictions for sex with a 13-year-old girl when he was 15 and a burglary in 2010 when he put his hand over the mouth of a woman in her bedroom before fleeing the scene as she screamed.

Gurdeep Garcha, defending, said Shuck was an intelligent man who hoped his guilty pleas and his apologies would "provide some comfort" to the victims.

"He understands just how damaging his behaviour has been," Mr Garcha said.

Judge Nicolas Cartwright said rape in any context was a serious offence but rape of a "randomly selected stranger" not only strikes at the victims but at the community as a whole.

"It is bound to make lone women afraid on the streets and even in their homes," he said.

Judge Cartwright told Shuck the elderly woman was "understandably terrified."

He added: "Her life has been changed forever."

He said the seriousness of the offences taken together justified a life sentence.

He was also ordered to register as a sex offender for life for the second time and given a sexual harm prevention order restricting his movement and banning him from Kidderminster.

West Mercia Police Assistant Chief Constable Richard Moore, Chair of the Strategic Management Board for West Mercia MAPPA, said: “Following his release from prison in May 2017, Ashley Shuck was managed through multi-agency public protection arrangements (MAPPA).

"The Strategic Management Board for West Mercia MAPPA has now commissioned a mandatory multi-agency serious case review to examine the offender management of Ashley Shuck.

"The Board has appointed Jill Hawes, formerly Adult Protection Coordinator of Worcestershire Adults Safeguarding and MAPPA Coordinator, as independent Chair of this review.

“We have also made a referral to the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) which has recommended a local investigation managed by West Mercia Police.”