Assistant Justice Archibald Warner is expected to hand down a sentence today to a man who admitted a sexual assault on a 76-year-old woman during a home invasion in 2002.

In a victim impact statement, read in Supreme Court yesterday by Prosecutor Juan Wolffe, the pensioner said the ordeal left her with bruises and she found fragments from her broken glasses in her ears days after the attack by Raymond Maxwell Perott, 38.

She said she had been mentally traumatised for months with the fear she could have been given AIDS from the attack, although tests proved negative.

The woman, who has diabetes, suffered a heart attack and also had to cope with her husband?s cancer in the aftermath of the assault.

The attack nearly broke up her marriage, she said, as she initially blamed her husband for leaving the door unlocked.

Now she has to ask him to warn her if he?s coming because she can?t bear to be sneaked up on.

The woman said in the statement: ?I don?t trust people anymore. I am extremely nervous and paranoid.?

She has had counselling for her anger and depression. Perott, who has a string of dishonesty convictions as well as two for sex with underage girls, had only been released from jail three months prior to the attack.

Perott, of no fixed abode, pounced on the woman as she lay in her bed while her husband was in the room next door by throwing a mat over her face.

He then told the terrified woman: ?Shut up or I am going to murder you.?

Perott slammed a pillow over her face with such force it broke her glasses and again threatened to kill her as he demanded money for his cocaine habit.

She led him to $200 on the dresser but Perott was not finished and repeatedly tried to rape her as she struggled and begged for mercy.

He told her he had a knife and threatened to kill her if she made a noise but he then escaped. The maximum sentence for sexual assault is 20 years. Mr. Wolffe called for a sentence of 12 to 14 years on the assault and a sentence of five to eight years for the burglary ? the maximum is ten years.

He argued the terms should be served consecutively. Perott has convictions dating back to the mid-1980s for house breaking, unlawful assault on a woman and stealing as well as two consecutive nine-month prison sentences in 1990 for having unlawful carnal knowledge of girls under 14.

In 1992 he was sentenced to seven years for three counts of robbery. In 1997 he was jailed for three years for stealing, was jailed again for six months in 2001 for stealing and was jailed in 2002 for unlawfully damaging a house door. Perott was interviewed and arrested by Police shortly after the attack after he went to complain about being attacked by two men baseball bats.

Mr. Wolffe said the attack had affected the woman in the most profound way and he suggested Perott should be put under a lengthy supervision order when he was eventually released from prison. Defence lawyer Craig Attridge said the correct sentence for the sexual assault would be ten to 12 years.

He said: ?This offence is an aberration in his criminal history.?

The unlawful carnal knowledge offences dated back years and involved two women who were drinking alcohol in a social club and who had implicated three other individuals for similar convictions, said Mr. Attridge. He added that the low sentences had been significant.

He said his client was high on a ?cocktail of drugs and alcohol which would have incapacitated the average individual? on the night of the incident which helped explain why he could not remember the attack.

Perott had taken heroin and ecstasy that night. Perott?s drug and alcohol abuse began when he was nine, Mr. Attridge said, as he grappled with the trauma of physical and sexual abuse at the hands of various members of his family as well as foster families which began when he was three.

He said Perott would need psychological assistance in prison to tackle the root causes of his addiction.