Victim blasts court’s six-year jail term
BY JOHN JEFFAY AN ARMY medic raped by her ex in a nine-hour ordeal has slammed his six-year sentence as “sickening”.
She revealed she felt “physically sick” at the “pathetic” jail term handed down to Stephen Graham on Tuesday.
Carin, 29, waived her right to anonymity but asked for her surname to be withheld.
She said: “It makes me feel physically sick. I think the justice system is messed up.
“It doesn’t send a very good message to other victims. At the end of the day, if a woman comes forward with something like this, it’ll mentally rip them apart.” And she said being “ripped to shreds” in a four-and-a-half hour cross-examination at his trial was almost as bad as the rape itself.
Carin added: “To admit something like this, it’s a massive hit on your life. I was in that dock for fourand-half hours and I was terrorised by his defence.”
Graham, 29, was sentenced at Edinburgh High Court after being convicted at an earlier hearing of beating Carin before raping her in February.
Lord Summers handed him a five-and-half-year sentence with a further six months for strangling and beating her in a separate attack in January.
He was also found guilty of two threatening and abusive behaviour charges involving police officers at a flat in Markinch, Fife, and at Levenmouth police station, Fife, last September.
Referring to Carin’s testimony, Detective Inspector Paul Dick said: “It is only because of her courage in coming forward to report the abuse that we were able to ensure Graham was brought to justice.”