A PROSTITUTE told a court yesterday how she was raped in her home by a client who held a gun to her head.

She said it was the second time in just over a week that kerb-crawler Keith Arliss, 37, picked her up in Middlesbrough's red light district.

The first time he drove her to her home in the town in his white Vauxhall Cavalier and he paid her £40 for sex.

But the next time, he asked to use the lavatory and then he burst into her bedroom with the gun, which police later said was an airgun.

The woman, who turned to prostitution two years ago to feed a £40-a-day heroin addiction, told Teesside Crown Court: "He had the gun in his hand. He put it to my head and he pushed me onto the bed with his chest and jumped on top of me.

"I started to cry. He said 'I just want some money'."

After denying she had any money, she alleges Arliss said: "Well I'm not going with nothing, I want something," and raped her before leaving her tied up.

She heard his car drive away and then she freed herself and ran to a corner shop to phone the police.

Prosecutor Fiona Swain said that eight days later an armed Durham police patrol spotted Arliss's car on the A1M and arrested him at gunpoint near the Bowburn interchange.

The gun was under a front seat.

She told the jury that Arliss pleaded guilty last October to attempted robbery and possessing an imitation firearm with intent to commit robbery.

David Lamb, defending, said that Arliss insisted he paid £40 and they had consentual sex.

Arliss, formerly of Selkirk Crescent, Birtley, County Durham, pleads not guilty to raping her on May 13, last year.

The trial continues