Victim uses cellphone to catch rapist

TUESDAY MAY 23 2017

ABRAVE teenager brought her rapist to justice by using her cellphone to film him attacking her. Lillian Constantine was attacked as she walked home at night using her smartphone to light her way. Despite her terror, the quick-thinking 18-year-old pressed record when Ashraf Miah grabbed her beneath a street light which the council had switched off to save money.

The magistrate’s daughter can be heard screaming and pleading with the takeaway worker on the two minute and 47-second clip. He ran off but police used a still from the film to track him down.

Miah, 34, has now been jailed for 13 and a half years in what is thought to be the first time a victim’s footage of an entire attack has helped put a rapist behind bars. Lillian has waived her right to anonymity to urge other sex crime victims to come forward.

On the night she was attacked last September, Lillian had been recording footage in bars in her home town of Ramsgate, Kent, for her sixth-form media studies course at Canterbury College.

Miah pounced as she headed home at 2am, forcing her to the ground. “As soon as he touched me on the shoulder I started to record,” she said. “I was screaming the whole time, ‘I’m filming you, I’m filming you. You are not going to get away with this’.” The noise woke residents which scared Miah off.

Police were called in and DNA swabs were taken but no match was found.

It was the harrowing footage shot on her Samsung phone that proved crucial as an image of the attacker’s features enabled police to identify him. – Daily Mail