A MAN has been jailed for 11 years for repeatedly raping a young woman in an ordeal lasting ten weeks.

The victim arrived in England from Romania in March this year aged 17 to raise money for her mother who needed an operation.

Kujtin Rexha, 43, forced her to have sex with him every day for more than two months at a caravan in Little Bentley.

She eventually called the police and Rexha was arrested on May 18.

Rexha, of Jefferies Road, Braintree, denied rape and sexual assault but was unanimously convicted by a jury after a six-day trial at Chelmsford Crown Court.

Judge Patricia Lynch QC jailed him for 11 years.

Speaking after the hearing, Det Insp Leighton Hammett, who led the investigation, said: "I would like to thank the victim for her bravery in coming forward to report what was happening to her.

"She was a vulnerable young woman who had come from to a foreign country and was made to perform sexual acts against her will.

"The individual who had subjected this woman to such a prolonged ordeal is now behind bars and his victim can now hopefully start to rebuild her life.”

Rexha, who has four children with his first wife in Albania and whose second wife lives in Braintree, claimed the couple were in love and he thought she was 25 or 26 years old, not 17.

He claimed she made up the allegations because she had stolen £1,700 from him.

He denied two rape charges, two sexual assault charges and a count of rape covering between March 1 and May 16.

Before the trial began the prosecution offered no evidence on three charges of slavery relating to three Romanian men working at a car wash Rexha runs in Little Bentley and he was found not guilty of those charges.