'Bomb The Bass star raped me'

A trainee teacher wept today as she told the court how she was raped by a music star.

She claimed that Tim Simenon, a DJ and frontman for dance band Bomb The Bass, attacked her as she slept after a night out.

The tearful 27-year-old said she woke up in a sleeping bag on Simenon's floor to find him groping her.

After she told him to stop, he raped her and attempted to force her to perform a sex act, the woman claimed.

Giving evidence from behind a screen at Snaresbrook Crown Court in London, she said: "I was crying pretty much from the start when I realised what was happening.

"I kind of switched off after a while, I gave up, I couldn't cope, so I just disappeared inside my head and thought of my mum or someone like that."

The woman said she had gone to sleep with her mobile phone in her hand and she tried to call her partner for help as she was raped.

"I was really drunk and I was trying to phone my partner but I didn't have any credit," she said.

"Afterwards Tim pulled up his boxers and went to lie down on the bed and went to sleep.

"I waited for him to go to sleep and then I couldn't wait to get out of there. I felt horrid, I felt in shock."

The woman said she had met Simenon for the first time that night when she was out with friends celebrating a birthday at a bar on Upper Street in Islington, north London.

She had gone on to a nightclub with Simenon and others before going home with him and going to sleep separately in a sleeping bag on the floor.

Simenon, 37, had hits including Beat Dis, which went to No 2 in 1988, and also produced for Bjork and Massive Attack.

He says sex was consensual and denies rape and indecent assault following the incident in March last year.