Buckland rape trial: Woman, 19, attacked after stab threat in 'brutal and terrifying' ordeal against Portsmouth school wall

The ‘terrified’ 19-year-old was walking in Buckland when Abdelrahman Adam, 18, ‘threatened to stab her with a knife,’ Portsmouth Crown Court heard.

Londoner Adam’s trial started today with prosecutor Martyn Booth telling jurors the defendant struck in a five-minute window of opportunity.

Opening the prosecution, Mr Booth said: ‘It’s the crown’s case that this was a brutal and terrifying ordeal for (the woman), one during which she was forced to have sex with a complete stranger under the threat of being stabbed or hurt with a knife.’

Jurors heard the woman had been walking in Lake Road after midnight on September 20 last year when two men on an e-scooter approached her.

After noticing the pair while listening to music, she then ignored them and turned into Turner Road to avoid the men, the prosecution said.

They followed her into the street before she neared the nursery entrance to Ark Dickens Primary Academy, Mr Booth said.

When she reached the recessed entrance at the nursery side of the school she was ‘confronted’ by Adam, he said.

Mr Booth said: ‘That male told her that he had a knife. He told her that if she remained quiet she would be okay.

‘Whilst at no stage did she see any knife she took his threats very seriously indeed. Her fears were reinforced because she thought she could see something in his pocket that she thought might well be a knife.

‘To put it bluntly: she was terrified by what was going on, terrified of what was about to happen to her, what could happen to her.’

He added: ‘She immediately started crying. She initially thought that the male was going to rob her.

‘Instead, he pushed her against the wall, in the corner of two brick walls, so that she was facing it.

‘He then pulled down her shorts and knickers.’

At this point the defendant raped her from behind, Mr Booth said. ‘She was terrified, very much in fear and crying throughout,’ he said.

‘The other male – who was with that person, had been standing nearby – quite what he was doing is anyone’s guess.

‘But he made some sort of comment about somebody or a car approaching, and the male who had just raped her stopped what he was doing, and they both ran off.’

The woman pulled her underwear and shorts up and left the area ‘highly emotional’ and ‘seriously distressed’.

Police were called at about 12.46am and officers arrived shortly after, the court heard.

Officers scoured CCTV to track the woman’s movements and saw the two men on the e-scooter.

They were seen in Kingston Crescent and heading toward Stamshaw, where Adam’s brother lived, the court heard.

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Some 10 days after the incident Adam, of Gathore Road, Wood Green in London, was arrested at his home in the capital and an e-scooter found at the property.

‘I did not have any involvement with the alleged rape,’ he told police in a prepared statement. ‘I don’t know anything about it. There will not be anything to forensically link me to the offence.’

But Mr Booth said DNA was taken from his cheek and it provided a ‘match’ to the victim after she was examined following the attack. Phone data shows Adam’s phone was used in the area at the time of the incident, he added.

Adam is set to say ‘it was all entirely consensual and at her instigation,’ Mr Booth said.

The prosecutor said that claim was ‘ludicrous in the extreme’.

Adam denies rape.

(Proceeding)

A message from the Editor, Mark Waldron

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