Jailing Christopher McKeown for four years, Judge Edward Bowen QC told the 30-year-old the root of the problem lay in the consumption of excessive quantities of alcohol.

McKeown was found guilty of raping the woman in her home in Barrhead at the High Court in Glasgow in August and sentence was deferred until Thursday last week.

The court heard that McKeown had been among a number of people in the victim’s house in October 2012.

The trial jury heard that the student was in bed when she was woken by McKeown having sex with her. He demanded she shut up as he held her down.

She told the jury she bit him hard on his lip to get him away. The woman said: “It was the only thing I could do. I didn’t have any other control over the rest of my body.” The victim told the jury that her life had changed a lot after the attack. She dropped out of university, left her job and lost friends.

McKeown claimed that what happened was consensual. He said he had chatted with the woman and, “One thing led to another”.

McKeown’s defence counsel, Robert Mitchell, asked the judge to limit any sentence as the matter had had a devastating effect on McKeown and his family.

The judge told McKeown: “You are the victim of a culture which seems to be that large quantities of alcohol can be consumed without any effect on behaviour.

It is tragically clear it did have an effect on you, as previous convictions show and the sooner you realise that the better”.

Rapes of this type had to be taken seriously, he said, and the lowest possible sentence was four years imprisonment.