A husband raped his new wife on their wedding night after she told him she didn’t want to have sex, a court heard.

The woman, who is in her 20s, told Exeter Crown Court she was so drunk after she returned home from the wedding reception that she told her husband she did not want to have sex.

However, her husband ignored her pleas and forced her into it against her will.

He is also charged with raping her another four times during their two-year marriage.

She finally went to the police after being attacked twice in two days. The husband denies five rapes.

Richard Crabb, prosecuting says the husband’s attitude to his wife changed after the wedding and he developed a sense of entitlement, telling her ‘You’re my wife, it’s allowed’ when she complained about his attacks.

The husband is also accused of raping her when she was heavily pregnant, while she was still in stitches after the baby’s Caesarean birth, and on two later occasions.

The wife denied inventing the allegations as a way of getting her husband out of her life and getting him into trouble.

She said: ‘I was scared of him. I knew what a temper he has got. I was afraid he would take my babies. They are my life.

‘I was petrified. I know it sounds messed up but it is how it was.

‘I had loved him to bits but I did not want to live like that any more.

‘On our wedding night I remember saying no and saying just because I am married to him I still had the right to say no.

‘I remember saying it and then passing out for a bit and then finding him on top of me having sex with me. I did not want sex at that stage. That was why I had said no.’

The trial continues.