A man has pleaded guilty to raping a Sikh woman who he “thought was a Muslim”.
John Ashby, of no fixed abode, attacked the victim in Walsall in October after following her off a bus and entering her home while she was upstairs.
He had initally denied the charges against him, but on Tuesday admitted he was responsible for the attack in October 2025.
Extracts from body-worn police footage showing the woman, who cannot be identified, were played to a jury of six men and six women on Tuesday, during which she was comforted by a female officer and said her attacker had called her a “bloody Muslim b****”.
The woman, said by witnesses to have been hysterical while repeatedly screaming, told police she had been raped in a bathroom by the intruder, who was armed with a piece of wood and claimed to be a “British master”.
In a video interview played to the court, the complainant told police: “He had a stick in his hand. I said ‘who are you’ and I started screaming.
“He switched off the light. He said ‘I just want fun with you’. He said ‘you are a f****** Muslim b****, I said I am not a Muslim, I am a Sikh.'”
The woman also told police the man was initially aggressive and had continuously verbally abused her but then became calm.