33 years on... victim of the ‘early bird rapist’ sees him go to jail
A VICTIM of the “early bird rapist” told of her determination to face her attacker and “see the whites of his eyes” as he was jailed for 13 years yesterday.
Yolande Kennedy, 51, bravely waived her right to anonymity 33 years after she was raped at knifepoint by Christopher Clark to speak out about her harrowing ordeal.
Ms Kennedy, who now lives in the US, was just 18 when she was attacked by Clark in 1985.
She said: “I wanted to face him, see the whites of his eyes, and let him know how it’s affected me.
“He probably won’t care, because of the sort of person he is but I want to tell him exactly how I feel. He needed to know and I need that to help me with some closure.
“The police asked if I wanted to come over to England. I said, ‘Absolutely, I want to be in that courtroom’.”
Speaking publicly for the first time, Ms Kennedy said Clark – who earned his nickname following a string of early morning sex attacks in the 1980s – watched her “for a few days” before making his move, attacking her in Grays, Essex.
Die
She said: “He would sit on a wall, just watching me. I did not think anything of it – every time I saw him he would let me walk a little way and then he would run past and look back.
“I thought maybe he was just a local worker. Then I had a day off and then the next day I went to work and that’s when he grabbed me and took me into the farmyard and did what he wanted to do.
“Time stood still. I was in complete shock. When he ran away he had left his knife and he came running back.
“I thought, ‘Oh my God, he’s going to slit my throat,’ and I was going to die. But he picked up his knife and covered his face for some reason.”
Clark, now 68, was only caught by Essex Police last year when the case was reviewed following advances in DNA technology.
Despite claiming to have no memory of the incident, he admitted a single charge of rape at Basildon Crown Court last month.
He was yesterday sentenced to 13 years in jail and five on extended licence.
The serial sex attacker had been jailed for life in 1997 for a separate attack in Bristol, and was just weeks away from a parole when detectives made their breakthrough in the Essex case.
He has convictions for a further string of offences including rape, indecent assault on a child under 14 and burglary with intent to rape, the court heard.
Finally given the chance to face Clark three decades after her attack, Ms Kennedy told him in court: “I became like a broken vase – you can piece it back together but it won’t be the same as it once was. You made me feel like I was nobody, somebody that used and abused.
“You obviously think you’re powerful, but in reality you’re nothing – a nobody, a sad old man who hopefully will feel pain for what you have done.
“Nothing would make me happier than knowing you will never get the chance to hurt anyone again.”
Members of Ms Kennedy’s family wept as she read a statement describing how she had even attempted suicide to escape the pain Clark caused her. She added: is to be “The police at the time were very old school. They just didn’t believe me. They thought my story was too ‘fantastic’, that I had remembered too much, there was too much detail.
“I have had to live with that for 33 years, just wondering had he moved on to worse things? Did he kill somebody? Had he moved on to hurt other people?”
But the mother-of-two added that her treatment following the DNA breakthrough has been much better.
She is now giving guidance to Essex Police on how they support sex attack victims.
DCI Stephen Jennings, of the Kent and Essex Serious Crime Directorate, described her as an “inspiration”.