The victim of a violent rape which left her with multiple injuries told police officers "if only I could have died", a court has heard.

Robert Richards, 22, denies he was the attacker.

He denies rape, attempted rape, attempted murder and causing grievous bodily harm at the victim's home in Chessington on October 23 last year.

The victim of the attack, a woman in her 70s, took to the stand behind a screen today at Kingston Crown Court to listen to an hour long recording of her first police interview.

It was recorded in hospital five days after a brutal attack left her with multiple serious injuries.

Jurors listened to the distressing interview taken in St George's Hospital's high dependency unit on October 28 where the victim broke down in sobs as she described the attack.

She said: "I remember thinking if only I could have died when he rushed me and jumped on my back - how much better off I would have been."

She added: "I was screaming and screaming with the agony as much as anything as the horror. It was horrible.

"He was getting more and more infuriated but I could not stop screaming as long as I got the chance because how could you not scream? How could you not scream? I'm entitled to scream."

Earlier in the interview she described how her attacker had pulled down her pyjama bottoms and attempted to rape her.

She said: "I was begging him to leave me alone.

"I said please don't hurt my back. Please please don't hurt my back.

"He was wearing a condom so the whole thing was planned.

"He threw me further up the bed so that I fell off the other side."

The woman, who weighed seven stones at the time, said she was unsure whether she lost consciousness during the attack but admitted there were times when she could not breathe as the attacker had covered her mouth and tried to strangle her.

She said: "I don't know how I am alive."

Jurors listened to the woman repeat words allegedly said by the attacker: "'I'll f***ng kill you if you don't stop pulling my hands away.

"I'll f***ing kill you and I'll f***ing hurt you'...and he hurt me anyway."

She said: "I knew I was going to suffer and suffer.

"He takes his fun on the floor."

In the interview the woman said her ordeal only ended when she "recovered her wits" and repeatedly smashed a lamp against a wall to get a neighbour's attention.

She said: "If this does not work I'm a dead person because he will kill me. He had already tried to kill me."

The victim was treated for a broken jaw, a bleed on the brain, a fracture below the eye, a broken hip, several fractured vertebrae and 10 broken ribs last year.

She required two separate operations, one to repair her hip and the other to mend her jaw.

Duncan Cooke, defence counsel for Mr Richards, asked no further questions after the interview was played.

The court heard yesterday that police had found blood stains on a pair of track suit bottoms Mr Richards wore to work matching the blood of the victim.

The jury heard that Mr Richards told police officers following his arrest that he found the track suit bottoms while on the way to the bus stop, and put them on because it was raining.

The trial continues.