The Sunday Times - UK (2021-11-14)

The Sunday Times November 14, 2021 2GN 17

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people “having sex” next to her. She felt

the man’s hand on the small of her back

as she drifted in and out of sleep.

Later, she remembers the man being

on top of her. “My brain was like, ‘Is this

actually happening? Am I still asleep?’ He

just started having sex with me as I was

face down on the bed. I was obviously

asleep or at least trying to be and I

remember the pain of him doing it as

well,” she said. “As he started to do it ... I

remember my anger was growing, I was

increasingly confused. I didn’t try and

physically stop him as he was massive.”

Eventually her mind came into focus.

“I just said, ‘Who the f*** are you?’ He

told me his name,” she said. “I was like,

‘This is wrong. What’s happening?’”

She claims that after she protested, the

man left the room in a hurry, a claim that

appears to be corroborated by CCTV.

Shortly afterwards she called the

police. In the call, broadcast by Channel

4, she said: “I think we might have just

been raped. There was a man in our hotel

room and neither of us know who he was.

I specifically remember him having sex

with me and my friend in separate occa-

sions ... He was white, a Caucasian male.

Fairly tall. Sort of fit. He was quite athletic

but broad shouldered. He left but quite

hurried. I remember him being hurried.”

Lucy said: “[The police] came straight

to us. There’s a gap where we were both

sitting on the pillows. I WhatsApped a

friend and said, ‘I think we’ve just been

raped.’” Officers later separated the

women, who were interviewed at length.

They were also examined physically and

samples taken. Lucy claims she suffered

internal bleeding and was covered in

bruises, evidence she said was heard in

Stop turning a blind eye to

prostitution, army is warned

Footage of Lucy being interviewed by

the police featured in the Channel 4

documentary, Rape: Who’s on Trial?

The programme has sparked outrage

over the eventual failure to convict

would allow British

authorities to collect

evidence, has not been

received.

But Wallace said that there

were questions on whether

the UK could have done more

to move the case forward

over the past nine-and-a-half

years, saying: “I think that is a

matter to look back on, and

ask ourselves that.”

When asked whether he

had been horrified by the

reports about widespread use

of prostitutes by British

troops, which emerged

alongside details of Wanjiru’s

death, Wallace, a former

army captain, said: “We

should be asking ourselves

about what our soldiers are

doing to respect women.

Let’s start with that. And have

we done too much turning a

blind eye over the last 30

years about prostitution?”

The defence secretary is

also dealing with the fallout

from the Tory MP Sarah

Atherton’s parliamentary

report on women in the

armed forces, detailing the

experiences of more than

4,000 women over 40 years.

Wallace said that he “wants

to get it all out in the open”

and emphasised the need for

soldiers to respect women.

“There was definitely in

the past a sense of ‘it’s what

happens in these countries’,

and I think the real key here

... is better respect [for

women],” he said.

@HannahAlOthman

up,” alleging that the murder

had been covered up.

Since speaking to The

Sunday Times, Soldier Y is

understood to have made an

official report to the police.

Speaking to Tom Newton

Dunn on Times Radio, Carter

said that he only became

aware of the case following

recent press reports, but said

that “the chain of command

who are responsible for this

are absolutely engaged in

this” and that he expected a

swift resolution.

“Part of what needs to be

investigated is to understand

why it disappeared...

because it is extraordinary

that it didn’t re-emerge

until 2021,” he added.

Last week, Eugene

Wamalwa, the Kenyan

defence minister, said

the country would seek

the extradition of the

man suspected to

have killed

Wanjiru, but

Wallace said

there had been

no legal request

so far.

The

Ministry of

Defence says that

it cannot launch

its own

investigation as

the Kenyan

authorities are now

reinvestigating, and

that a formal mutual

legal assistance

request, which

The army should stop

“turning a blind eye” to

troops using prostitutes and

should be asking itself

questions about soldiers’ lack

of respect for women, the

defence secretary has said.

Speaking to The House

magazine, Ben Wallace said

the Oxfam scandal — in which

it emerged that aid workers

had been paying for sex with

impoverished women in Haiti

following the catastrophic

earthquake in 2010 — should

have been a “red flag” to the

armed forces about soldiers’

own use of prostitutes in

“countries of poverty” such

as Kenya.

The behaviour of British

soldiers — particularly when

on postings overseas — has

come under scrutiny

following Sunday Times

reports about the murder of

Agnes Wanjiru, a young

mother who is alleged to have

been killed in 2012 by a

British soldier who paid her

for sex in Kenya.

General Sir Nick Carter, the

outgoing head of the armed

forces, has said that there had

been “a failure of leadership”

in dealing with Wanjiru’s

murder, and that he would be

“very surprised if it doesn’t

get to a conclusion pretty

quickly,” following recent

news reports about the case.

The 21-year-old

hairdresser, who lived in

Nanyuki, had turned to sex

work to help pay for food and

clothes for her baby

daughter, Stacy.

She was last seen alive

going to a hotel room with a

British soldier following a

night out. Her body was

found two months later. She

had been stabbed and

dumped in a septic tank.

A Kenyan inquest in 2019

concluded that one or more

British soldiers had killed

Wanjiru. Following an

investigation by The Sunday

Times, one squaddie who was

present on the night

identified her killer, who he

said had confessed to him —

saying “I killed her” — and

had then shown him the

body in the septic tank.

Several other

members of the Duke of

Lancaster’s regiment

confirmed the name of

the suspect, identified

only as Soldier X,

and said that both

the murder and

his identity was

an “open secret.”

The man who

claimed to have

seen her body,

named as Soldier

Y, said he had

reported the

murder to “the

hierarchy” at the

time, but had

been told to “get

out and shut

Hannah Al-Othman

Agnes Wanjiru

was killed in 2012

the police believe me. The system

believed me. But society didn’t.” She

believes the fact she and her friend had

been drinking meant they could not

secure a conviction. “When people hear

that a woman was drunk and had sex

with someone, that’s what they hear, ‘A

woman had drunk sex,’ rather than, ‘Man

raped woman who couldn’t consent’.”

Ministry of Justice figures show that

1.6 per cent of alleged rapes reported to

the police go to court, and that 60 per

cent of those end in a conviction.

On the night of the alleged attack, in

October 2018, Lucy had been at a singing

rehearsal. She and her friend went for

tapas then met other friends at a cocktail

bar before going to a nightclub. Lucy

recalls having sangria with dinner and

later a cocktail and “a couple” of gin and

tonics at the cocktail bar and club before

heading back to the hotel. The next thing

she remembers is being woken up by two

court. “I remember she pulled out the

speculum and clapped with glee. She

said, ‘This evidence is gold. They’re going

to get the bastard.’”

Over the next year, police investigated

the case. They quickly identified the man

as a fellow hotel guest and he was

charged in September 2019. The case

went to court the following October.

The man claimed he met the women as

he was returning to his room and they

invited him into their room, where they

consented to a drunken threesome.

He claimed that he met the two women

as he was returning to his room. He said

they invited him into their room and one

of the complainants started to kiss the

defendant, and that this progressed to

full sexual intercourse before the other

woman took off her clothes and joined in.

Lucy said officers asked her “ridicu-

lous questions” about whether she

watched porn, what her fantasies were

and whether she and her friend had had

threesomes before. She was also

required to hand over her phone. “They

go through every photo and message

you’ve ever sent; every app you’ve ever

downloaded. They ask you about what

kind of porn do you watch. It’s very intru-

sive. You do feel like you are being inter-

rogated for your own life choices.

“I was interrogated about my friend as

well and whether or not we’d had a three-

some before and stuff. I was like, we bake

cookies. No. I’ve never even seen her

without a top on, let alone naked.”

Despite finding the process difficult,

she said she felt the police handled every-

thing as sensitively as they could and

A woman who reported being raped by a

stranger feels “let down by society” after

a jury found the man not guilty despite

compelling CCTV evidence.

Lucy, 30, who works for the NHS, said

she felt the system was “rigged against

victims” after she and her friend were

allegedly raped at a hotel in Bristol fol-

lowing a night out.

In addition to hearing the accounts of

the two women, the jury at Bristol crown

court was shown CCTV from the hotel

that showed the defendant in the corri-

dor drunkenly trying to enter the rooms

of random guests. He then went down to

the lobby where he saw the two women

enter the hotel after a night out, and fol-

lowed them up to their bedroom. The

women do not remember returning to

the hotel but Lucy claims she awoke in

the night to find a stranger on top of her

friend. Afterwards, she claims he got on

top of her and had sex with her as she

drifted in and out of consciousness.

Additional CCTV showed the defen-

dant speaking to the women in the corri-

dor before having a potential drunken

kiss with Lucy’s friend, who collapsed on

the floor seconds later. Footage later

showed him leaving the room, shirtless

and holding his shoes in his hands.

Both women claimed they were too

drunk to consent. But while the defen-

dant, who was 22 at the time of the

alleged attack, admitted having sex with

the women, he was acquitted after claim-

ing it was a consensual threesome.

The case has prompted outrage after

being highlighted in a Channel 4 docu-

mentary last week: Rape: Who’s on Trial?,

which followed police officers investigat-

ing rape and sexual assaults. In parlia-

ment last week, the Labour MP Anna

McMorrin said the documentary exposed

the “ugly truth behind women’s experi-

ences and of a system that is letting

victims down”.

Speaking after the verdict, Dale Mor-

gan, the Avon and Somerset police

detective who investigated the case, told

Channel 4: “I thought we had a very

strong case. I am shocked, but that’s the

jury system.”

Waiving her right to anonymity, Lucy

said: “The charge notice was a big

moment, because it says, ‘The CPS and

Shanti Das were asking the questions in an effort to

ensure their investigation was as rigorous

as possible. In court, it was a different

story. She claims she was asked questions

designed to trip her up and was shown

evidence she felt was taken out of con-

text. “The trial was more traumatic than

the rape itself,” she said.

Since the defendant was found not

guilty, Lucy said she has lost faith in the

jury system and called for an overhaul.

She said: “I don’t have a lack of faith in

the police or CPS. My lack of faith is in

society and the jury system specifically.

Magistrates’ court is all dealt with by

facts. Whereas we have this adversarial

system for really shit cases like rape and

murder, where suddenly it’s ‘members of

the public — let’s let them decide’. Why,

for the worst crimes, is it not fact based?”

The impact on her life — and on her

friend — has been huge. They do not dis-

cuss it, but both have suffered.

Lucy finds herself frightened to do

normal things. “I still can’t do a lot of stuff

that I used to do because of the mental

trauma. It’s excruciating. Everything I do

I think, ‘If I get raped again will this work

against me?’ ”

But she said that, if it were to happen

again, she would still go to the police —

and urged others to do the same.

“Although it was horrendous and I

wouldn’t wish it on anyone, you have to

keep reporting these things. So please all

come forward.”

If you have been affected by any of the

issues mentioned in this piece, contact

police or Rape Crisis on 0808 802 9999.

People hear ‘drunk woman had sex’

rather than ‘man raped woman’

Images from CCTV cameras show that the man attempted to open numerous doors in the hotel before he encountered Lucy and her friend, and caught him shirtless and in a hurry leaving their room early the following morning

CHANNEL

After her alleged attacker was acquitted, despite CCTV evidence, an NHS worker says society is unsympathetic if alcohol is involved