Teenage victim’s mobile phone recording helps to convict rapist

A RAPE victim secured her attacker’s conviction after she recorded the incident on her mobile phone.

The teenager had met Pardon Bopoto on a night out in Bristol and offered him her spare room for the night when they returned home.

However, when Bopoto “wouldn’t take no for an answer” and forced himself on the woman, she recalled an item she had seen on ITV show This Morning in which a woman being sexually assaulted video recorded her attacker, and was able press “record” on her own mobile.

Bopoto, 36, of Bristol, was arrested and denied rape. However, a jury who heard the audio recording at Bristol Crown Court convicted Bopoto and jailed him yesterday for six years.

Judge William Hart told him: “From the recording you can tell she has been drinking and is tired. All she wants you to do is leave her alone. You are determined to carry on and you did.

“Anyone listening to the recording would have found it very emotional and upsetting, as the jury did from their reaction to it. She made her position clear, both physically and in words. You were not prepared to take no for an answer, and you raped her.”

The 19-year-old victim read a personal statement to the judge from the witness box, sitting behind a screen.

She described how she froze when she was assaulted and had gone from an “outgoing and bubbly” person to finding it hard to trust people and not going out alone.

She told the court: “It happened, I’m going to have to live with it and I’m not sure how.”