A man who raped a woman after she fell asleep at a party has been jailed for four and a half years.

Darren Anderson attacked the 23-year-old woman at a house in Livingston, West Lothian on December 20, 2014.

The High Court in Edinburgh heard she woke up to find Anderson having sex with her after she fell asleep fully clothed.

Anderson, 26, of Morrison Way, in Livingston, had denied raping the woman while she was asleep and incapable of giving or withholding consent but was convicted by a jury last month.

At his sentencing hearing at the High Court in Edinburgh on Friday, judge Lord Turnbull called for the victim's statement to be passed to the lord advocate to highlight the impact of the time taken to bring the case to court.

Lord Turnbull said: "I have read the content of the victim impact statement provided by [the victim] in this case and it really was quite troubling because the young lady is obviously quite articulate and able to explain quite powerfully the impact which this event had on her life."

The judge said part of the impact she described related "to the lengthy period of time which passed between the incident and the trial".

Despite the attack happening in December 2014, a preliminary hearing in the case was only held a year later, and the trial was last month.

The judge said the six-month period to bring the case to trial following the initial High Court appearance was "very lengthy and concerning" but was a consequence of the volume of casework the court faced.

He said attempts were being made to address this.

The judge told Anderson he had taken advantage of a young woman who was sleeping and who he had only met on the evening of the attack.

He said: "The whole of society knows the importance of displaying respect towards young women and the whole of society understands that the conduct of young men who fail to show that respect by taking advantage of women in vulnerable situations cannot be tolerated."

When the victim awoke to find Anderson attacking her, she ran upstairs to alert a friend.

The woman told his trial: "I did not want to have sex with him at all."

She said she had been visiting a friend who she had not seen for a while and they were planning to go out in Livingston but the other woman was not well.

Other people, including Anderson, arrived at the house and they later played a game of spin the bottle.

The woman was dared to kiss Anderson, which she did. He later asked her to go upstairs, saying it would "wind up" another of the men at the house but she refused.

Anderson later claimed to police during an interview that the woman had led him on all night.

He said: "She was over me all night."

He accepted he was touching her in an intimate way, trying to get her to wake up.

At one stage he told officers: "We didn't have sex. I guarantee."

DNA evidence proved he did have sex with her.

Advocate depute Mark McGuire told jurors: "He wanted sex. She was asleep. He did not care."

Mr McGuire said it had resulted in "a deliberate, degrading, disgusting attack on a helpless young woman".

The prosecutor accused him of being "a predatory man who took advantage of a woman" who had previously rebuffed him which he had accepted at the time.

Alongside his jail sentence, Anderson was placed on the sex offenders register.