Sorry for raping you– student’s text a year after ‘attack’
A FORMER Oxford University stu- dent raped a young woman in his flat and texted her a year later to apologise, a court heard yesterday.
Sherman Ip’s victim fled in tears after the attack and sent him a message to tell him what he did was wrong, it was said.
She initially decided against going to the police, but changed her mind when Ip, 25, sent her a text admitting to the attack a year later, the jury was told. The text allegedly said: ‘I am really sorry for raping you ... It’s all my fault.’
Ip was said to have raped the woman, who is in her early 20s, in May 2013 while he was studying for a master’s degree in physics at University College London. He then moved to Oxford University in 2015 for the first year of his PhD in statistics. He is continu- ing with the PhD at Warwick University. Prosecutor David Povall told Southwark Crown Court that Ip attacked the woman, who was also a student, when she visited his flat in Euston Square, north-west London.
‘She went to visit him at his home address to talk to him,’ he said. ‘As they talked it was clear that what he wanted was to have sex. He obviously wasn’t listening to her because he kept trying to grope her and remove her clothes.’ Mr Povall told the court the victim ‘moved on to the bed to put some distance between them,’ but Ip ‘came over and forced her down’ and ‘ started trying to remove her clothing’.
He said the woman ‘started crying during the sex’ and ‘felt frozen as it was happening’.
‘He obviously noticed that because he asked her if she was all right – but continued in any event,’ the prosecutor said. ‘ She later sent him a message to point out to him that what he did was wrong and not what she wanted.’
The woman told her boyfriend in September 2013 about the alleged attack but decided not to make a complaint.
Mr Povall added: ‘What drove her to go to the police was a
‘I just wanted to get away’
message she received from him in October 2014.’
Giving evidence, the woman told the jury that she ‘just wanted him to stop’.
‘I was wearing a T-shirt and he kept trying to lift it up,’ she said. ‘I said, “I don’t want to have sex or anything, I just want to talk”.
‘He just said “Ok” and then would let me talk, but then would try to touch me again.’
She told how the conversation turned to ‘normal everyday things’ after the alleged rape.
‘He asked me whether we were Ok and I just said “yes” because he’s the sort of person that if I said “no” he would not let me leave,’ she said. ‘I just wanted to get away from him.’
Ip, of Maidenhead, Berkshire, denies rape.
The trial continues.