A teen allegedly tried to rape his friend's mum - until she pulled a gun

Jordan Corter. Photo / Shelby County Sheriffs Office

An 18-year-old, reportedly just out of high school, has been charged with trying to rape his friend's mother during a sleepover in Tennessee.

Police said Jordan Corter and other "boys" showed up at the woman's home in Arlington, outside Memphis. In an interview with WREG, one resident compared the leafy neighbourhood to the fictional suburbia of Mayberry, where nothing goes wrong.

The mother, whose name police did not release, may have had a different intuition. About 10 minutes after her son's friend arrived, a sheriff's investigator wrote in an affidavit obtained by WREG, she collected all the alcohol in the house and locked herself in her bedroom.

She was "awaked at 02.30 hours to Jordan Corter knocking on her bedroom door."

The woman answered the door, thinking something was wrong. "Jordan forced himself into the bedroom and locked the door behind him," she later told police.

She said he pushed her to the bed and put a hand down her shorts. In a subsequent interview, the affidavit continued, Corter wept and told police "he basically forced her to do something she didn't want to do," and "should not be forgiven."

He allegedly tried to rape the woman, Fox 13 in Memphis reported, but she broke free, giving herself a black eye in the struggle. She told investigators she kneed Corter in the groin and got to a pistol she kept in the bedroom.

"Police said the woman then placed the gun in the man's face and told him to leave," Fox 13 reported.

According to the affidavit, the woman's boss noticed her condition when she went to work the next day and convinced her to phone the authorities.

Corter was subsequently arrested, charged with sexual battery and attempted rape and released on bail. He could not be contacted, and a spokesman for the Shelby County Sheriff's Office told the Washington Post no details would be released while the case is investigated.

A man who answered the door at Corter's house told WREG he had just graduated from high school and was "a good kid."

A Harvard University study found that the weapons were used in self-defence in fewer than 1 per cent of crimes during a five-year period

If the police account is correct, then the case is a rare example of a crime victim using a gun to successfully protect herself.

Such cases often make the news - as when two men grabbed their firearms and killed a gunman at an Oklahoma restaurant, likely saving other lives, or when an armed bystander chased down the suspect in last year's Texas church massacre.

Aligning himself with the National Rifle Association and gun lobby, US President Donald Trump has proposed arming teachers in an attempt to stop school massacres.

But a Harvard University study reported in 2016 found that despite the country's millions of household guns, the weapons were used in self-defence in fewer than 1 per cent of crimes during a five-year period.

In those cases, the researchers wrote, they did about as much harm as good. "The likelihood of injury when there was a self-defence gun use (10.9 per cent) was basically identical to the likelihood of injury when the victim took no action at all (11.0 per cent)."

The leader of that research, David Hemenway, wrote in the Los Angeles Times that another study found that out of 1100 sexual assaults, only one victim used a gun for protection.