THE wife of serial rape suspect Antoni Imiela has given evidence at Maidstone Crown Court as a prosecution witness.

Dressed smartly in black, Christine Imiela spoke for more than an hour as she described the home life she shared with 49-year-old Mr Imiela before his arrest.

She was questioned about his working hours, his interests and the couple's sex life.

Mrs Imiela, who met the suspect in 1996 and married him a year later, said she was devastated and felt sick when her husband was connected to a series of rapes, but told the jury the man she knew was a friendly, loving and affectionate husband.

During her time in court she rarely looked at her husband, who sat in the dock wearing a grey suit.

He had stared at the courtroom door awaiting her arrival, but appeared not to make much eye contact with Mrs Imiela, choosing instead to stare straight ahead or glance at the floor.

Clutching a tissue, Mrs Imiela told how her husband's working hours grew longer and he would regularly sleep in his car to avoid driving home tired.

When Mark Dennis, for the prosecution, asked what type of home life the couple were having, she replied: "We wasn't."

She described how Mr Imiela brought home a mobile phone one day, saying he had found it while working on the railways.

"He made a few phone calls. He said he was making sexy phone calls," Mrs Imiela said.

"I didn't know what he was doing. He said he was just having a laugh." She later told the court she was not happy with his actions.

Mr Dennis questioned her about some of the days Mr Imiela is said to have committed several of his attacks.

Mrs Imiela described how he had arrived home three or four hours later than usual on August 7, 2002, the day the prosecution allege he raped a woman in Epsom, Surrey.

The day before, when Mr Imiela is accused of raping a 52-year-old in South London, Mrs Imiela had taken his sister Yvonne to Hastings. She was staying with the couple at their home in Heathside, Appledore, near Ashford.

Mrs Imiela later said how, following police taking a DNA sample from him, her husband failed to turn up at work - the day the prosecution claim he drove to Birmingham and attacked a 10-year-old girl.

Neither she nor his boss at work could contact him on his mobile phone. Much later in the day he rang her to say he had been working late in Oxford for a different firm.

She did not see him again until the following evening after telling him not to drive home.

When cross-examined by Rebecca Poulet QC, for the defence, she denied she thought a CD-fit of the wanted man looked like her husband or that he was nervous when police officers arrived at their home to take a DNA sample.

"I think I was more nervous," she told the court. "It [the CD-fit] doesn't look anything like Tony, I've always said that. Tony said 'it doesn't look like me'.

"I saw it a few times on TV - I wouldn't have known I was looking at him at all."

She left the witness box and the courtroom without glancing at her husband.

Mr Imiela denies nine charges of rape, one of attempted rape, indecent assault and kidnap between November 2001 and November 2002.

His first attack is said to have been the rape of a 10-year-old girl on the Stanhope Estate, Ashford.

The trial continues.