A MAN has admitted raping a wheelchair-bound cerebral palsy sufferer in her own home, 18 years after the sickening attack.

Jeremiah Sheridan, 37, from the legal part of the Dale Farm traveller camp, Crays Hill, pretended to be selling carpets and furniture when he knocked at his victim’s home in May 1991.

The woman, then aged in her forties, didn’t want anything, but let Sheridan in to use her toilet.

He had earlier indicated he would plead not guilty to one count of rape and another of unlawful wounding with intent.

However, before a Sheffield Crown Court hearing was due to begin yesterday, he changed his plea to guilty on the charge of rape. The other offence was withdrawn.

Sheridan only became a suspect by chance after a review of the case in 2006 found DNA preserved from the rape scene in Deepcar, Sheffield, matched his.

Following an appeal on the BBC’s Crimewatch and police appeals in the Echo last September, he was arrested at Heathrow airport later that month on board a flight from Australia where he had been selling generators with other travellers from Dale Farm.