A MAN has been jailed for 14 years for a brutal sex attack on a woman just nine days after he was released from prison for rape.

Timothy Foster raped his middle- aged victim as she walked along on a footpath near a Hampshire railway station.

He had sneaked on board a London-bound train near Bournemouth without paying but as the service approached Ashurst in the New Forest, the sex fiend spotted a ticket inspector coming down the compartment and hurriedly got off.

Foster, on licence for a brutal rape committed on a London common, spotted the woman and leapt over a fence to follow her, initially starting a conversation and even helping her to cross a muddy patch.

But she became fearful of being alone with a stranger and decided to turn around and walk back to the station. Within seconds Foster struck.

He jumped on her back, knocking her to the ground, where she lay defenceless with a broken wrist, and brutally raped her. He then dragged her to a ditch where he forced her head down in mud and water, and again sexually abused her.

Foster broke off his attack and demanded money, taking a mere £2 from a jacket pocket – but made an extraordinary blunder.

He failed to realise her mobile phone was in another pocket, before running towards the station.

As soon as he was out of sight, the woman, in her mid- 50s, dialled 999. Within minutes, police were at the scene and he was quickly arrested.

Yesterday Foster, 26, of Westwey Road, Weymouth, was convicted of rape and a further sexual assault charge by a jury at Southampton Crown Court .

Judge Gary Burrell QC jailed him for 14 years, saying he had subjected his vulnerable victim to a horrific and frightening assault for which he had shown no remorse.

“She was humiliated and degraded and, as she said, she will have to live with this for the rest of her life. I take the view he is a very dangerous young man and there is a high risk he will rape again,” he said.

The judge said Foster would serve two-thirds of his sentence before his case could be heard by the Parole Board.

The court heard Foster’s criminal career started in May 2002 and he had convictions for shoplifting, aggravated taking of a vehicle without consent and theft.

In November 2009, he received a five-year term for raping a woman on Tooting Beck Common and was released just nine days before he struck again.

Foster was convicted and sentenced in his absence after refusing to attend court for the majority of his trial. He gave no evidence in his own defence.