Student rapist is locked up for 16 YEARS after Wolverhampton Freshers' Week attacks
A rapist who preyed on girls living in the same block of student flats as him has been jailed for 16 years.
University of Wolverhampton student Akiel Flemming – described as a ‘danger to the public’ struck during Freshers’ Week creeping into a fellow student’s bedroom in the early hours before raping her.
Birmingham Crown Court heard how the 26-year-old, from Albert Avenue, Manchester, tried to chat up a stranger in the street in the early hours of October 1 last year, but she rejected his advances and he returned to the address where he was staying, which was split into living hubs.
The defendant started to prowl the corridors and entered the bedroom of a 19-year-old who was fast asleep at around 5am and climbed into bed with her.
The horrified student woke up to find Flemming having sex with her.
She forced him out of her bed and contacted her boyfriend before alerting police.
Flemming had gone to a different floor in the same building and crept into the room of another 19-year-old and got into her bed. She woke to find him sexually assaulting her.
Flemming headed to a different part of the building where he entered the bedroom of a third 19-year-old girl but she was in bed with her boyfriend.
It emerged he had left his bank card in the bedroom of the first victim and his passport close to the bed of the second girl.
He was arrested in his own bedroom in the same building on the same day.
Flemming pleaded not guilty but was convicted of rape, sexual assault and trespass with intent to commit a sexual offence after a trial.
Judge Patrick Thomas QC told Flemming: “I am in no doubt you represent a significant risk to the public.”
Flemming will also be monitored for six years after his release.
Claire Nicholls, District Crown Prosecutor with the West Midlands Crown Prosecution Service’s Rape and Serious Sexual Offences Unit, said:“Throughout this prosecution, Akiel Flemming has maintained his stance that consent was given by his victims. However, this was not the case, his victims did not know him and were asleep and therefore unable to give their consent.
“The law is clear - that if a person does not consent to sexual activity, and the other person does not reasonably believe they are consenting but persists in engaging in sexual activity with them, then they are committing a sexual offence.
"If a person is asleep, the starting point is that they are not in a position to give consent and it will be difficult for anyone engaging in sexual activity with them to assert that they reasonably believed that person consented to sex.
“The position is the same for people who cannot give their informed consent to sexual activity because they are incapable because of severe intoxication through drink or drugs, or they are too young to give consent or they have been just been subjected to unlawful force or they have a mental disability.”
