A judge has put off passing sentence on a man who raped a 71-year-old woman as she walked her dogs at an isolated spot at Yatesbury, near Calne.

Michael Alcock, 27, was due to learn his fate when he appeared back at Swindon crown court on Friday.

But Judge Douglas Field adjourned the case to Friday October 30 to allow time for a second psychiatric report to be carried out on him.

In order to pass a hospital order instead of a prison sentence the court needs to have reports from two forensic psychiatrists.

Despite agreeing to commission the new report the judge said ‘My own view at the moment would be making a prison sentence for public protection’.

That would mean he could effectively pass a life sentence with Alcock only being released when the parole board thought it was safe.

The judge could also impose a set sentence and add a number of years of extended licence.

He said that one of the issues he was considering was Alcock maintaining his innocence despite the jury’s verdict.

Alcock, of Bridgend, South Wales, was remanded in custody for the report to be made.

He attacked the pensioner as she returned to her car with her two dogs after exercising them at the old Yatesbury airfield in December.

The Welshman claimed that the married mother of three from Calne had paid him to have sex with her in the bushes close to where she had parked her car.

The woman, now 72, told a jury she thought she was going to die when he attacker dragged her into the woods and raped her.

She had been walking her dogs at the airfield off the A4 near Cherill when she said she was set upon by a young man who was out hiking.

After threatening her with the knife she said he grabbed her by the arm and dragged her into a copse where he pushed her to the ground and had forced her to have sex with him.

She said her husband had gone away on business the weekend before the incident on Wednesday December 3 last year.

When the ordeal came to an end the woman, who had suffered a blackened eye and scratches to her face, said she sat in her car before going to tell the police.

Before he dragged her off she said she offered him cash to ‘find someone you could pay’ to have sex, but claimed he took the money anyway after raping her.

Under cross examination from Sue Evans, defending, the woman denied she had paid the man for sex.

Miss Evans said “I suggest you gave him about £80 to have sexual contact with you,” which the woman denied.

She said “I am going to suggest he did not have his hand on your windpipe or use any violence towards you,” to which the pensioner replied “That is a total travesty of what happened.”

The barrister also put to the woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, that she had claimed to be 51 years old and asking Alcock if he had a girlfriend.

It is her client’s case that he got the knife out to help her remove stones from the tyres of her car which he did before she offered him cash for sex.