A ‘MONSTER’ who raped two women after their drinks were spiked has been jailed for life. 

Lewis Stewart came across the victims as they were staggering around the street drunk and posed as a Good Samaritan who was helping them reach safety.

He took them back to one of their homes where he raped them both during two threesomes, one of which also involved his own girlfriend.

Stewart had not spiked their drinks but did give one of the women an ecstasy tablet and ply her with even more drink before having sex with her when she was semi-conscious or asleep.

The two victims had no memory of what had happened to them and were amazed to wake up to find two strangers with them in the flat in Paignton. They only learned they had been raped because he boasted to them about it.

Both women wrote harrowing victim impact statements in which one revealed that she could not longer face living in the flat where she had been raped and had become temporarily homeless.

They are both on medication and receiving counselling and say they and their families cannot recognise them as they same people as they were before.

One said: “The actions of that monster have affected me deeply. I don’t think I will ever be the same.”

Stewart had a record of sex offences going back a decade to when he was a teenager and was caught with an underage girl hiding in his room after he persuaded her to run away from home to be with him.

He had received a suspended sentence for flouting the terms of the sex offenders register by sleeping in the same house as a child just three days before he committed the rapes in January this year.

He was jailed for life at Exeter Crown Court after Judge Stephen Climie categorised him as a dangerous offender who will always present a risk to women.

Stewart, aged 28, was "living in a tent" at the time of the offences. The court was told he was originally from Dawlish. He was found guilty of three counts of rape - one against one victim and two against the second.

He admitted supplying ecstasy, properly known as MDMA, to one, and to possession of MDMA with intent to supply.

He was cleared of administering a drug with intent to commit a sexual offence at his trial in July after the jury heard the victims may have had their drinks spiked before they met him.

Stewart was jailed for life with a minimum term of 18 years, which means he will not be able to apply for parole until he has served that long.

Judge Climie told him: “You history, attitude and approach to matters in respect of women demonstrates not only that you are a danger but that you are going to remain a danger for the rest of your life. 

“These rapes are particularly indicative of just how serious a danger you are.”

During the trial the jury heard how Stewart and his girlfriend pretended to be helping the women, who they met outside the Green Ginger pub as one was trying to hold up the other, who was incapable of walking.

He eventually got into a taxi with them and took them back to the home of one of them, where she was so drunk that she went straight to bed .

Stewart’s girlfriend took the other to buy a bottle of vodka even though she was already very drunk and was seen on CCTV giggling and flashing her breasts at other customers in the shop.

The woman was plied with vodka and given an ecstasy tablet by Stewart. He had sex with both women when they passed out and took a picture of one of them naked from the waist down with her legs open.  

Stewart claimed that both women had been capable of consenting and had been enthusiastic participants in group sex.

Mr Rupert Taylor, defending, said Stewart is autistic and was living in a tent and taking large amounts of drugs at the time he committed these offences.