Porn-obsessed teen raped and tried to murder student on his 17th birthday
‘Disturbing fixation
A TEENAGEr obsessed with violent pornography raped a student on his 17th birthday before trying to bludgeon her to death.
Charlie Pearce left his victim with ‘truly dreadful, life-threatening’ head injuries after battering her with a paving slab.
He was caught on CCTV carrying the concrete block under his arm before using it to try to ‘silence’ his victim. She was then left for dead in park bushes.
The woman, in her 20s, was discovered an hour later by a cyclist who had stopped to check for a puncture and heard her groans.
Leicester Crown Court heard the 6ft teenager had a ‘fixation with violent rape’ and had been searching for violent sex assaults online in the build-up to the 11.30pm attack in the city’s Victoria Park.
Prosecuting, Gordon Aspden said: ‘It’s a disturbing fixation manifested in his interest to look at warped pornography and violent assault of helpless young women. An attack of this type had been festering in the back of his mind in the days and weeks leading up to the commission of his actions.’
Mr Aspden said the ferocity of the attack ‘went far, far, far beyond what was required to accomplish his sexual objective’.
Covered in injuries ‘from head to foot’, the aim was to ‘silence her’ jurors were told.
Pearce had been drinking in a nearby pub with his uncle to celebrate his birthday an hour before the attack. After pouncing on the victim as she walked through the park, he tried to get rid of his blood- soaked clothes and attempted to set fire to her handbag which he’d stolen.
A jury heard the woman ‘came within a hair’s breadth’ of dying after being hit repeatedly. She was placed in an induced coma and has told police she remembers nothing of the incident.
Witnesses nearby called 999 after hearing screaming and seeing a woman apparently being punched to the floor. But when the police arrived they were unable to find the victim. CCTV footage taken in a nearby driveway showed Pearce crouching behind a car to avoid a passing patrol car.
He was eventually arrested the following evening when his father and stepmother saw the park CCTV footage and called police. Pearce, who has no previous convictions, was linked to the attack by ‘billion-to-one’ DNA matches.
The victim, who was in court to see her rapist convicted, said in a statement: ‘Before this horrific incident I was an independent young woman. Last July I woke up from a coma not knowing what I had been through.
‘I have to live knowing what happened to me when I was walking home that evening. I have to live with the violent injuries as well as the physical and psychological impact they have had on me, and will continue to have on me.’
Phillip Bradley QC, defending, said cannabis-user Pearce had searched online for topics involving gang rape. He told the jury: ‘you may agree, the subject matter was sex – unlawful violent sex. In other words, rape. The person conducting those searches was interested in ‘controlling’ and was fixated in that distorted way.’
Following a four- day trial, Mr Justice Haddon- Cave lifted an order banning the media from naming Pearce because of the gravity of the offence.
Outside court, Detective Chief Inspector rob Widdowson, called the attack ‘barbaric and wicked beyond belief’.
Pearce, who was convicted of attempted murder and admitted rape, grievous bodily harm and theft of the handbag, will be sentenced later.