A “remorseless sexual predator” raped and abused two women, filming them on his phone without their consent, a court has heard.

Radcliffe man Christopher Hardman, 48, abused one woman after the other in horrific ways, Manchester Minshull Street Crown Court heard.

Prosecutor David Toal said: “She called the police and reported sexual offences by him.”

Mr Toal told the court that, while on bail for the first set of sexual offences, Hardman then subjected a second victim to similar abuses.

The case was heard at Minshull Street Crown CourtThe case was heard at Minshull Street Crown Court (Image: Anthony Moss) This included filming the pair of them having sex on his phone, lying that he had simply been using his torch before she told went to the police.

Mr Toal said: “She reported this to the police saying that he had raped her.”

Hardman, who has 15 previous convictions for 37 offences, denied his crimes when brought before the court.

But he was found guilty by a jury of voyeurism, rape and coercive control against his first victim and of six counts of rape, seven of voyeurism and one of sex assault against his second.

William Staunton, defending, said that Hardman, of Canalside, Radcliffe, had been an amphetamine user and that many of his crimes were committed amid a “haze of drugs.”

He said: “When he came into custody, he was nine stone, he is now 14 stone.”

He added: “He was effectively emaciated.”

Mr Staunton said that Hardman’s relationship skills were “non-existent” but asked the judge to pass a sentence that would not extinguish “any hope of release". 

But Judge Bernadette Baxter reminded the court of Hardman’s treatment of his victims.

Referring to one of his victims, she said: “You treated her like an object and not as a person.”

She added: “Your purpose was to use and humiliate that woman.”

Judge Baxter detailed how he had “controlled” his victim using alcohol and had lied to her, claiming that he was using his phone as a torch when he was in fact filming her.

She said: “You ignored what she said and just did what you wanted.”

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Judge Baxter said that Hardman has “gaslit” another of his victims as he abused her and had earned no credit by denying his crimes all the way to trial.

She said: “However what the trial did demonstrate that us have no remorse for what you have done.”

Judge Baxter said that reports characterised Hardman as a “remorseless sexual predator".

She jailed him for 22 years with an extended licence period of another three years and made him subject to an indefinite sexual harm prevention order and sexual offence registration order.