Masked intruder who raped and assaulted 83-year-old sent to jail

A MASKED intruder who raped an 83-year-old disabled widow after breaking into her Fife home has been jailed for 11 years.

Kyle McKenzie, 23, left his distressed victim in shock and pain and fled from the house only after the woman managed to activate an alarm.

An adviser from a community alarm team called the pensioner and the woman, who lived alone, told him: “Please send someone as quickly as you can, I’ve just been raped.”

The High Court in Edinburgh heard that during the attack the woman was struggling for breath and told McKenzie as she lay on the floor of her bedroom: “You are going to kill me.”

During the ordeal the woman remembered her alarm and got her attacker to help move her on to a bed where he continued to sexually assault her but from which she could reach the help device.

Lord Boyd of Duncansby told the rapist: “It is clear to me this was planned.

“You were dressed in black. You wore a balaclava and you were armed with a gardening tool.

“You subjected this woman to a sustained, violent and degrading sexual assault in the course of which you raped her.

“It is difficult to put into words the revulsion that all right-thinking people will have for your conduct that night.”

The court heard how McKenzie punched his victim on the head and body during her desperate struggle and caused her breathing difficulties.

Lord Boyd said: “Not unnaturally, this woman wonders what might have happened had she not activated the alarm.”

The judge said he was provided with two victim impact statements from the woman, now 84, which he said were particularly difficult to read as she described the searing pain she suffered in the attack and the psychological impact, including nightmares and flashbacks.

Lord Boyd ordered McKenzie be kept under supervision for a further five years and told him if he had been over 25, the starting point for his jail term would have been 14 years “and may have been considerably longer”.

First offender McKenzie, who was living between addresses in Glenrothes and Falkirk, earlier admitted breaking into the woman’s home in the early hours of June 25 2020 and assaulting and raping the widow while brandishing a gardening tool and wearing rubber gloves.

He also pled guilty to committing a further break-in at an elderly couple’s home in Glenrothes earlier that morning, during which he stole a decanter.

McKenzie’s guilty plea to the rape came late in proceedings and he had previously claimed his victim consented to the sex.

Following a police investigation into the attack McKenzie was arrested at the home of a known associate in Kirkcaldy on July 7 2020. He had visible scratch marks to both sides of his neck.

McKenzie was placed on the sex offenders register indefinitely.

Kyle McKenzie raped the disabled woman in her home.