Jailed, Romanian sex attacker who tried to rape gran on way to work
A WOMAN walking to work was subjected to a horrific sex attack by a Romanian criminal who was able to travel freely back and forth to the UK despite an appalling catalogue of offences.
Cezar Florea, 29, was described as “a violent and dangerous individual” as he was jailed yesterday for 16 years.
But his traumatised victim’s family demanded to know why he was not monitored entering the country.
His 52-year-old victim suffered a degrading daylight ordeal in which she was beaten to the ground, kicked in the face and subjected to a determined and prolonged rape attempt which only failed because a passer-by intervened.
Florea snatched the grandmother’s handbag as he ran from the scene before fleeing the country.
At the time he struck, Florea was already a convicted sex attacker in Romania and had a string of robbery convictions stretching back to his teenage years.
Yet he was able to use lax immigration checks and the EU’s open borders to repeatedly travel to the UK and find work in a Middlesbrough car wash.
After the rape attempt he remained on the run in Romania for three years until he was caught committing a robbery.
His victim could not bear to go to Teesside Crown Court to see her attacker sentenced but her daughter said: “How was a man with such a long history of crime allowed to come to Britain without being monitored and do the things he did to my mother? She was just a lady walking to work as she did every day when she came across this person who, to us, should never have been allowed into the country.
“There has to be closer monitoring of people with the sort of history he had to stop them from walking into whatever country they choose and then disappearing again.
“My mother is a changed person after what he did to her. She has never fully recovered.” Judge Simon Bourne-Arton Middlesbrough. Judge Bourne-Arton added: “As a result of what you did, her life has been changed, not so much by the physical injuries, though they are bad enough, but the psychological effect of your attack on her has been catastrophic. You subjected her to a determined, violent and horrific attack.”
The court was told that Florea ran up behind his victim and seized her around the throat with his arm before punching her repeatedly in the face.
While she lay helpless on the ground with a broken nose and arm he kicked her repeatedly in the face before yanking down her trousers.
In a victim statement, she said: “I was feeling happy and confident on my way to work when I just remember being grabbed from behind. I was screaming and a hand was placed over my mouth. I remember feeling terrified at what this man was going to do.
“I thought he wanted my handbag but then I realised he was trying to rape me. I relive the trauma every day on my way to work.”
Florea admitted attempted rape, assault and robbery. His convictions for theft began when he was just 16.
Then in December 2007 he was jailed for 20 months for sexual activity with a girl under 16.
In September 2008 he was jailed for three years for aggravated robbery and in November 2015 – after the attempted rape in Britain – he received another three-year sentence for robbery.