A man who subjected a businesswoman to a two-hour sex attack in a seafront hotel in Brighton was today jailed for 12 years.

William Steward, 24, forced his way into his victim's £75-a-night room at the Hilton Metropole.

He silenced her screams by covering her mouth with his hands and threatened to shoot her if she cried out for help.

The subsequent rape was described to the jury at Lewes Crown Court as an "opportunistic act of sexual depravity".

His victim only managed to end her ordeal by persuading him to go with her to the reception for matches to light a cigarette.

She promised she would not go to the police and he left, to be arrested minutes later at the Clock Tower.

The woman was bitten, bruised and traumatised.

The judge, Mr Justice Aikens, told the court the previously happy and successful IT consultant was now a changed woman.

Steward, an unemployed window cleaner who had fled London for Brighton to escape drug debts, denied four charges of rape. He told the court he believed his victim was a prostitute.

But the jury of eight women and four men today returned guilty verdicts following just three hours' deliberation at the end of an eight-day trial.

Giving evidence earlier in the trial, the victim described how she was staying in Brighton on business when she heard banging outside her sixth-floor room at 4am last November 8.

She opened the door to find Steward lying on the floor, wearing a blue-and-white prison-issue shirt following his release from jail.

He told her he was looking for a friend before barging into her room, high on drink and drugs.

She told the jury: "I didn't want to have sex with him. I didn't want him in my room. I had tried to go for help. I thought he was going to kill me."

After persuading him to leave she immediately dialled 999.

She said: "I never wanted to see him again. I felt pity for him because he believed I would never tell anyone and I thought, 'How stupid you are because I am going to get you for this'."

Pierce Power, defending, said: "This was an unplanned, opportunistic and isolated act of sexual depravity."

After the verdicts were returned the court heard how the ambitious professional woman's life had been shattered by the attack.

Mr Justice Aikens said the woman's ordeal did not end when Steward left. He said: "It has had a very serious impact on her, physically and mentally."