Buckland rape trial: Accused man, 18, tells jury he was 'helpless' claiming woman said 'come with me'

AN ALLEGED rapist has told jurors he was ‘helpless’ as it was his teenage accuser who ‘drove’ him to having sex.
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Abdelrahman Adam, 18, is on trial denying raping a 19-year-old woman in Turner Road on September 20 last year.

He started giving evidence yesterday afternoon at Portsmouth Crown Court where he is accused of following her on an e-scooter outside Ark Dickens Primary Academy, threatening her with a knife and then raping her against the school wall.

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‘Are you a rapist?’ his barrister William England asked. Adam said: ‘No I’m not.’

Police cordoned off Ark Dickens school while investigating on Sunday, September 20. 
Picture: Keith Woodland (200920-6)Police cordoned off Ark Dickens school while investigating on Sunday, September 20. 
Picture: Keith Woodland (200920-6)
Police cordoned off Ark Dickens school while investigating on Sunday, September 20. Picture: Keith Woodland (200920-6)

Adam, 18, told jurors the teenage woman ‘drove’ him to have sex with her, and said: ‘I was helpless, and doing as she drived me through.’

He told jurors: ‘She said “come with me around this corner”.’

He added: ‘I followed her to the corner, then she started touching me and I touched her.’

Adam told jurors she then helped him have sex with her.

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Adam said he did not carry a knife in general, or on the day of the incident. ‘Did you threaten to stab the lady you were with?’ Mr England asked.

Adam said: ‘No.’

The prosecution’s case is that Adam raped the teenager in a five-minute window of opportunity at around 12.30am.

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Prosecutor Martyn Booth previously told jurors Adam’s claims that she instigated sex and it was consensual were a ‘pack of lies’ and ‘ludicrous’.

Adam said he was ‘very surprised’ when, he claims, the woman instigated sex.

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He said: ‘I was surprised and it was strange, and it was too quick - we didn’t get to know each other that well.’

Mr England said: ‘Were you happy you’d had sex with her?’

Adam, who said his friend standing nearby was on the phone, said: ‘Not really.’

He said he ‘went to play Fifa’ afterwards until ‘one, two then we slept’.

Jurors heard how Adam left Sudan at 14 after his father was killed in the Sudanese civil war.

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He travelled for 14 days by car from Sudan to Libya at the ‘end of 2016’ with his ‘cousins and friends’. He left Libya in ‘early 2017’ in a two-day boat journey to Italy.

Adam said he earned money working in construction in Libya to pay for the journey.

He then travelled through Italy to France and to Calais, before arriving in the UK as a stowaway in the back of a lorry with three others, he said.

Adam went on to live in Luton and then as a college student in London by 2019, all the while learning English.

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Adam, of Gathore Road, Wood Green in London, was arrested on September 30 at his home in the capital.

‘I haven’t raped a girl on that night,’ he told jurors.

Giving evidence today the woman told jurors she did not consent and added: ‘I was just trying to go home.’

DC Nicholas Sandforth-Smith showed jurors CCTV footage of Adam on an e-scooter with a friend approaching Turner Road, and then nearly five minutes later leaving heading along Kingston Road.

(Proceeding)

A message from the Editor, Mark Waldron

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