PREDATOR... ... AND VICTIM
Somalian got 9 years for attacking FOUR women ...but HUMAN RIGHTS law means he CAN’T be deported Aged 17, Angela was DRUGGED and VIOLATED before fleeing naked...then had to undergo an ABORTION. Now she asks: WHY is this brute back on Scotland’s streets?
FOR Angela Coutts, there is no shadow of a doubt: Abdalla Ali Hemed should be thrown out of the country immediately and never allowed to return. When she was only 17, the Somalian – then a grown man of 40 – subjected her to an ordeal of unthinkable cruelty.
After a chance meeting at a party, he drugged her and brutally raped her.
The only way she could escape was to run naked through the streets until she could lock herself in the safety of her home.
Horrifically, the attack left her pregnant – and facing the awful decision about whether or not to have an abortion.
For years, she has struggled with crippling anxiety and recurring nightmares.
Her only slight consolation came when Hemed was found guilty of vile crimes against her and a string of other women – and was sentenced to jail and then deportation.
But last week, in a decision that seems to laugh in the face of justice, judges took Hemed’s side – and ruled that deportation might breach his human rights.
Angry and incredulous, the now 30-year-old Angela has waived her right to anonymity to demand publicly that the rapist be removed from Britain immediately.
In a harrowing interview with The Scottish Mail on Sunday, she spoke out about her ordeal in order to protect other women and shame the authorities into kicking him out of the country.
SHE said: ‘He should be sent back to his own country. Or he should be locked up here for the rest of his life. The system has let not just me down, but let down the other girls he hurt too. It is just wrong.
‘How can he be walking around freely where we live, happy and without a care after what he did – whilst making me feel frightened every day? My life is just ruined because of him and what he did. Now I want to let people know exactly who this man is and what he has done. Maybe then he will finally be forced out of the country.’
Hemed’s attack came when the teenage Angela had just finished secondary school. She dreamed of going to college and becoming a hairdresser and a beautician.
But on a summer’s evening in July 2004, she and her younger brother went to a party in a neighbouring block of flats on Great Northern Road in Aberdeen.
Hemed was throwing a party and welcomed them in, offering the two teenagers drinks almost immediately.
Speaking candidly about the night she was raped, Angela said: ‘He went and poured them in the kitchen. Mine just looked like a vodka and lemonade. But once I drank it I couldn’t remember a thing, I passed out.
‘Abdalla told my brother to go and said he would take me home once I
woke up. But when I regained consciousness, I was lying on the living room floor and he and another man with long dreadlocks were on top of my body and doing things to me.
‘Another guy on the couch was watching. I was frozen in that moment.
‘I knew what was happening. I could see what they were doing and I had a really sore pain. But I couldn’t move.’
After a few moments, Angela came up with a plan to try to escape – although she had been stripped of all her clothing.
She said: ‘I asked if I could go to the toilet quickly – they let me go, but told me to hurry back. I ran straight for the front door and down the stairs.
‘Hemed came after me and tried to grab me, but I escaped his grip and ran home. They had taken all my clothes off me. I was completely naked running in the street to my house.’
Angela found out she was pregnant four-and-a-half months after she was raped. But the young mother could not face raising the child of her abuser and decided to have an abortion.
Still tormented by the decision she had to make at such a young age, Angela said: ‘I found out I was pregnant four-and-a-half months later; it was from that night. I knew I had passed the normal deadline for an abortion, it was already a baby growing inside me.
‘But I knew I would be reminded of what happened every time I looked at the child. I had to get rid of it. I was heartbroken. He ruined my whole life, he has made me a failure.’
Angela, who now has three children, turned to drugs and alcohol for several years after the incident. But with the arrival of her second child, she believed she had been given a new chance and could overcome the anxiety and depression brought on by her horrific ordeal.
Her recovery was shaken in January, however, when police came to her home to notify her that Hemed had been freed from the detention centre where she believes he had been held since his release from prison in September 2013.
LAST week, Angela learned that judges had refused to deport him in case he suffers hardship in his native Somalia. She said: ‘When I was told he was going to be released, I took it quite hard. I had been in a good place, I have lovely, beautiful children. But it knocked me.
‘Now, on hearing he is being supported by the courts, that he is walking around freely, maybe in Aberdeen, it has all come back to haunt me again.
‘I have been so worried that I might walk into him. I am constantly terrified. How is this fair? It feels like the whole system is against me. It is all just so wrong. I don’t know what the other three girls are doing with their lives, but I can imagine that at least one of their lives will be similar to mine. He has ruined it.’
Hemed was found guilty of attacks against four women, having carried out two rapes and two attempted rapes between July 2004 and December 2006.
Angela was the first of his victims.
She is haunted by the fact that, after attacking her, Hemed was free to attack the other women.
Immediately after she was raped, she went to police to report the crime – but fled when officers ordered a medical examination by a male doctor.
As a teenager in the immediate aftermath of a traumatic attack, she was terrified at the prospect of a man touching her.
She returned to the police station some weeks later – accompanied by a friend’s mother – but felt her claims were met with hostility and scepticism from the police.
Officers only took her full statement years later when they were investigating Hemed’s attacks on other women.
After hearing of Hemed’s latest successful court appeal, she is now adamant her voice will be heard.
She said: ‘He is going to destroy other women’s lives again. I know he will.
‘He should be put back to his own country. Or he should be locked up for the rest of his life.
‘He doesn’t deserve to live, because I don’t feel like I am getting to live my life how I should be or how I want. The court is not on my side.
‘But I hope that by speaking out now and telling everyone what an evil and dangerous man he is, that the judges might eventually see sense and remove him from the country. ’