Teenage girl raped on way home to family's £2.5m mansion by serial offender after getting stranded outside nightclub
- Arshad Arif raped a 17-year-old as she tried to get home from a night club
- She borrowed his phone and he put her in a taxi then raped her in a flat
- The rape bore similarities to another attack he was convicted of in 2004
- He had been out of prison for just over two years when he carried out the second rape last November
By INDERDEEP BAINS PUBLISHED: 17:05 GMT, 31 May 2013 | UPDATED: 17:06 GMT, 31 May 2013
Arshad Arif was unanimously convicted by a jury at Reading Crown Court of a double rape on a drunk teenager
A convicted rapist attacked a schoolgirl after targeting her when she lost her friends on a night out.Arshad Arif, 28, raped the 17-year-old as she tried to get home to her family’s £2.5million mansion after becoming stranded outside a nightclub with no money or phone.The rape was a chilling re-enactment of an attack Arif carried out on a girl of the same age in 2004. He was convicted and jailed for five years in 2006 after admitting the crime. He had been out of prison for just over two years when he carried out the second rape last November.
He was remanded in custody after being found guilty of raping the teenager twice and is awaiting sentencing.A jury heard that Arif lured the 17-year-old into a taxi in the early hours of the morning and took her to a park in Slough, which was miles from her home, and raped her twice.The drunken girl eventually escaped, jumped over a wall at the nearby home of an elderly couple and hammered on the door to raise the alarm.The rapist was caught because the girl had asked to use his phone to call home and police were able to trace him through his number. Jury members heard that in 2004, Arif had approached another drunken 17-year-old in the early morning, under the pretence of taking her home, and raped her in a flat.
On Thursday they took less than two hours to reach unanimous guilty verdicts on each of the two counts of rape.In a recorded police interview heard in court, his distraught victim said: ‘I just felt like I’m going to die. It’s just hard to believe it actually happened, that I would get away.’ The petite girl said the taller, stronger Arif had pushed her down and made her perform a sex act on him while threatening her.‘If I didn’t do it, I was going to be raped,’ she said. ‘In the end it was both.’
The attack was almost identical to another one he was convicted for in 2004
The eight women and four men on the jury at Reading Crown Court had heard how his latest victim had been on a night out celebrating a friend’s birthday with nine girls when she became separated from them on November 25 last year.The girl was stranded in the cold and wet outside Oceana nightclub, in Watford, Hertfordshire, for about an hour, drunk, with no phone or money and wearing just a small black dress and high heels.
She used strangers’ phones to try to call her own phone, which was in a bag with her friends, but nobody answered.She also tried to take a taxi home but was dropped back within minutes when the driver realised she had no money. Arif, who was on his own in the town, then joined her and several other people who had sought shelter from the cold in a doorway. CCTV footage shows them walking off together. At 3.15am, the girl’s parents – both successful professionals – were woken by a call from Arif’s mobile phone to their home landline.The girl said: ‘Mum, it’s me. I don’t feel well and I’ve lost the others. Can you come and get me?’
Within five minutes the concerned mother was on the road, yet when she got to Oceana her daughter was not there and she raised the alarm with police.
Reading Crown Court heard that Arif raped the girl twice as she tried to get home from a nightclub
The tearful woman told the court: ‘I went looking for her in bins, in alleyways. There’s a large pond behind Oceana and I was looking to see if she had drowned in there.’ Meanwhile Arif, who runs a mobile phone and watch business, and the girl were in a taxi heading to his hometown of Slough, Berkshire. As they arrived at a park, the driver noted the girl did not want to leave. She was then pushed and carried through the park to a remote spot and attacked.
As Arif led her out afterwards, she seized the chance to escape and ran to the home of pensioners Michael and Barbara Georgiu. Arif ran off to his nearby home.Arif was identified by his mobile phone number and arrested. Detective Sergeant Lucy Deane said: ‘This man is a dangerous predatory offender who needs to be locked up to ensure the safety of young women who find themselves, through no fault of their own, in vulnerable situations.‘He literally hunted this victim down – identifying her vulnerability and taking the worst kind of advantage imaginable.’
