On 24th June 2002 In The Crown Court At Southwark Before His Honour Judge Wadsworth QC And A Jury, This Appellant Faced: Common Law Case Study, UCD, Ireland
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- On 24th June 2002 in the Crown Court at Southwark before His Honour Judge Wadsworth QC and a jury, this appellant faced a nine-count indictment. Counts 1, 3, 5 and 6 alleged rape. Count 7 alleged attempted rape.
- Counts 2 and 4 alleged indecent assault as alternative counts to the rapes alleged in counts 1 and 3 respectively and were based on the inability of the victim, because of her age, to give consent in law. ]
- The victim in each of these counts was the same young woman, D. Counts 8 and 9 alleged living on the earnings of prostitution, the prostitution of the same young woman.
- Verdicts of not guilty were directed on count 6, which was an allegation of anal sex, and count 7. The jury acquitted the appellant on counts 1 and 3. They found him guilty on counts 2, 4, 5, 8 and 9. On count 5 the appellant was sentenced to seven years imprisonment; on counts 2 and 4, 18 months imprisonment to run concurrently; on counts 8 and 9, three years imprisonment to run concurrently among themselves, but consecutive to the remaining sentence.
- The total sentence, therefore, was ten years imprisonment, and a recommendation was made for deportation.
- A co-accused Edmund Ethemi, pleaded guilty to count 9, living on the earnings of prostitution.
- On 22nd November, on a severed indictment, while he was convicted of possessing a class A controlled drug, cocaine, with intent to supply, the present appellant was acquitted. Semi was sentenced to a total of six and a half years imprisonment and also recommended for deportation.
- This appeal against conviction is brought with the leave of the single judge.
- The main ground of appeal is an alleged inconsistency in the jury’s verdict arising from the acquittal of rape on counts 1 and 3 and the conviction on counts 5. A further ground related to the admissibility of evidence relating to £30,000 found in the flat which the appellant shared with his co-accused.
- We shall return to that later in the judgment.
- The complainant in this case was born in Romania, according to her birth certificate, on 20th August 1985. In the context of the issues which we have considered that dating is important.
- She left Romania in 2000 but was soon introduced into prostitution. She worked as a prostitute in Yugoslavia and Italy.
- She claimed that the appellant had bought her, provided her with false Italian documents and paid her passage to England where she arrived at the beginning of July 2001 when she was still 15 years old.
- In England, for a time she shared a room with the appellant in the co-accused’s flat.
- The co-accused was living there with his wife, Valbonne, otherwise known as Anna Maria, who also worked as a prostitute. Later they shared a flat alone.
- The appellant encouraged the complainant to work as a prostitute in a variety of brothels.
- She said that she had no option but to obey.
- She was the last working as a prostitute at the end of September, when, with the assistance of another woman who contacted the police, she escaped from the situation in which she had found herself.
