A DRINK and drug-fuelled rapist who struck as his victim walked home from a night out has been jailed for ten years for his “monstrous” attack.

Craig Campbell was told he had devastated the life of the young woman he stalked and attacked in the early hours of March 21 in Hartlepool.

Campbell had drunk two litres of cheap wine and at least 12 bottles of Newcastle Brown Ale with whisky chasers before the attack.

The 22-year-old had also smoked cannabis and taken two ecstasy pills, four valium tablets and LSD during his night out.

He was walking along Rossmere Way to his home in nearby Ormesby Road when he passed his victim – in fancy dress – going the opposite way.

Teesside Crown Court heard how Campbell span around, followed the woman and struck as she approached a grassed area near a sports field.

He raped her before launching a sustained attack, pulling her clothes off and throwing them over a fence onto football pitches.

Judge Les Spittle told him: “There is not much more you could have done to degrade and abuse that young woman...

this is as bad as it gets.”

Robin Denny, in mitigation, had earlier branded the behaviour “monstrous and ghastly” and said it was the result of a “disastrous modern culture”.

He said: “This ghastly offending would not have taken place were it not for drinking and taking drugs in that vast quantity with its appalling effects.”

Mr Denny provided the judge with letters from Campbell’s relatives that he said painted a different picture to the monster that night.

Campbell left his victim fearing for her life and covered in injuries after he struck, before she was found naked curled up outside a nearby house.

Outside court, the investigation leader, Detective Inspector John Chapman, described the attack as vicious, sustained and unprovoked.

He said: “I would like to extend my personal thanks to the members of the public who came forward, together with the witnesses in the case.

“Without the community and public spirit of all of them, we may not have been in the fortunate position of being able to have seen Campbell sentenced.”

Campbell denied rape and sexual assault, but was unanimously found guilty by a jury of both charges after a five-day trial last month.