The vile braggart who saw women as just trophies in a game
As cricketer faces jail for raping student in team mate’s bed, the depravity that led him to the dock
A CRICKETER who raped a clubber in his teammate’s bed on the first night of their competition to have sex with the most women was facing jail last night.
Jurors heard drunken Alex Hepburn, 23, had been ‘fired up’ by the WhatsApp sex game he organised with Joe Clarke, 22, an England Lions cricketer considered one of the best young prospects in the game.
Australian-born Hepburn pounced on the woman after she fell asleep following consensual sex with Mr Clarke at the city apartment the two cricketers shared.
Jurors heard that when she woke up, she initially believed Mr Clarke had instigated sex with her for a second time until she heard Hepburn tell her ‘you are beautiful’ in his Australian accent.
Hepburn, who claimed sex had been consensual, gasped and held his head in his hands before bursting into tears when jurors convicted him of raping the woman, in her 20s, after almost 11 hours of deliberations. The cricketer was cleared of a second count of rape at what was a retrial following a previous hearing at which jurors were deadlocked.
Worcester Crown Court heard details of the tawdry game of sexual conquests Hepburn was playing with Mr Clarke. They had exchanged numerous messages on WhatsApp, including one in which Hepburn suggested he had sex with 60 women during a ‘game’ the previous year. Others included ‘It feels like there is a population of 150 birds in Worcester and we have pumped every single one of them’ and ‘get them blind and then back to ours’.
Bailing Hepburn until a sentencing hearing later this month, Judge Jim Tindal told him ‘There is only one sentence that can properly be handed down in this case, and a custodial sentence is inevitable.’ TWO years ago, as spring arrived in Worcestershire and the cricket season finally got under way, the county’s young players were champing at the bit.
‘Excited as xxxx, lads,’ wrote all-rounder Alex Hepburn as he messaged his best friend and team-mate Joe Clarke to spell out the rules for a competition called ‘Stat Chat’. ‘The loser has to buy dinner and the second loser will have to buy drinks, the winner gets to enjoy a free night… May the best man win… Let’s play with the right spirit.’
To followers of the so- called ‘ gentleman’s game’ those words will resonate – cricket, a sport to be played not only within its laws but also within the spirit of the game.
But Australian-born Hepburn and Mr Clarke, two young, professional sportsmen with the world at their feet, weren’t interested in that. In fact, they weren’t even interested in challenging each other to outperform lteammates in terms of runs scored or wickets taken. No, the ‘stats’ or statistics they were talking about related exclusively to their sexual conquests.
The previous summer they and four fellow cricketers had taken part in a competition to have sex with as many women as possible. Hepburn bragged of having slept with at least 60 (a figure he later downgraded to ‘only’ 20), and yet still finished second to Mr Clarke. So, in March 2017, it was agreed they would have a re-run. And if that weren’t Neanderthal enough, the language used to set out the rules of the ‘ game’ and to describe the women who they planned to target demonstrated an attitude as deeply depressing as it was objectionable.
The plan was to ‘smash’ or ‘chop’ as many women as possible, labelling them ‘freshies’ or ‘re-heats’ depending ing on whether it was the first time they had slept with them or not.
This time three people would be taking part – Hepburn, Mr Clarke and fellow team-mate Tom KohlerCadmore. Privately-educated Hepburn informed them they would have to log the woman’s name, age, race, whether they were wearing a condom and their ‘performance out of ten’.
He stipulated that conquests had to be ‘legitimate’, meaning that sleeping with prostitutes would not count and joked about getting tested regularly for sexually transmitted diseases. There were also references to a previous occasion when he and Mr Clarke had a threesome.
‘Clarkey you only won last year because the hepperdawg [Hepburn] let ya have three balls [threesome] with him,’ wrote Hepburn, who nicknamed himself ‘the battery’ because ‘my *****ing goes on for hours and hours and hours’. And the 23-yearold added: ‘Always been me dragging the birds back… you raping them.’
That reference to rape, he would tell Worcester Crown Court, was just ‘banter’ between mates. Following Hepburn’s conviction yesterday on one count of rape, (he was cleared of a second count), it’s fair to say that absolutely no one is laughing now.
Because what began as a distasteful, degrading game among men who should know better ended with a young woman being taken advantage of while confused and half-asleep.
Hepburn then spun a web of lies, claiming that not only did his victim know what she was doing but had actively taken part. She ended up having to give evidence not once but twice after a first jury was unable to reach a verdict at a trial in January, forcing the case to be reheard.
His contract with Worcestershire County Cricket Club has now run out. But questions will be asked about the involvement of the team’s young players in such disgraceful behaviour as well as the club’s handling of the whole affair.
After Hepburn was arrested followthe incident on April 1, 2017, it is claimed he confided in his director of cricket, Steve Rhodes. It has been reported that Mr Rhodes did not inform anyone else at the club, with the result that Hepburn continued to represent the county and had his contract extended that summer.
The club’s board only learned of the incident in November 2017 when Hepburn was charged. Following an internal investigation, Mr Rhodes left Worcestershire. Mr Clarke, a 22-yearold viewed as one of the most exciting batting talents in English cricket, has since moved counties, taking with him a tarnished reputation.
Following revelations about the sex contest at the January trial he and Mr Kohler-Cadmore were dropped from an England Lions team that was due to tour India.
Coming so soon after the game was rocked by the case of England allrounder Ben Stokes, the timing was not good. Because while Stokes was last year cleared of a late- night assault outside a nightclub, the impression that emerges from both trials is one of young men behaving in a way that was previously confined to the nation’s footballers. Not any more, it would seem.
Hepburn, who made his debut for Worcestershire in August 2015, was born and educated in Western Australia, but also a British passportholder due to Scottish parents.
Mr Clarke played alongside him on that August day and the pair were to become best friends, arranging to share a flat for the 2017 season. While Mr Clarke travelled to Sri Lanka with the England Lions – the national second team – Hepburn stayed in Worcester for pre-season training.
But he was equally as engaged in making arrangements of an altogether different nature, exchanging more than 100 messages with Mr Clarke via WhatsApp about their forthcoming sex contest. The plan was to re-run the previous year’s competition in which, it appears, the pair slept with more than 100 women.
A message written by Hepburn read: ‘Oi last night was my 60th. Want 80 by the end of Worcs.’ Mr Clarke replied: ‘I reckon I’m about 75. I want 20 more this summer. Tough ask but reckon we have got it in us.’
Other messages sent by Hepburn included ‘it feels like there is a population of 150 birds in Worcester and we have pumped every single one of them’ and ‘get them blind and then back to ours’.
The jury did not hear all the messages sent between the pair after a judge in a preliminary hearing questioned whether they would help them decide where Hepburn had a propensity to commit a sexual offence.
The new competition was due to start on March 31. That was to be Mr Clarke’s first night out with the rest
‘You thought you were God’s gift to women’ ‘I rang my mate and told them I had been raped’
of a group of male friends dubbed ‘The Fellas’ following his return from the foreign tour.
Messages sent ahead of the night reveal their mounting sense of excitement. Hepburn sent a list of personal grooming tasks he had completed – ‘eyebrows, haircut, tan’ – before ending the message: ‘Fxxx the hep is on.’ Mr Clarke later replied: ‘So excited for tomorrow, bro.’
During the first trial Miranda Moore QC, who also prosecuted the re-trial, put it to Mr Hepburn that the group had only one aim. ‘You and your mates thought you were God’s gift to the women of Worcester didn’t you?,’ she said. ‘You thought you could “pull” — that it would be fun and easy, didn’t you?’
While Hepburn denied this was the case, one message not put to the jury saw the all- rounder describe himself and team-mate Mr Clarke as a ‘pair of tens’ who ‘should be banging models’.
Hepburn added: ‘There are no f***ing models in Worcester. If there is we have banged them.’
It wasn’t long before Mr Clarke, who nicknamed himself King after winning the previous contest, chalked up his first ‘conquest’.
On the night of March 31 drink had been taken in large quantities. The prosecution claimed Hepburn had drunk up to 20 bottles of beer, although he said it was much less than that.
Mr Clarke had enough to later make him vomit on the bathroom door before passing out.
First, though, he met a young woman, a student who cannot be named for legal reasons, while in the champagne bar of a city centre nightclub called Sin. She had also drunk a lot and after kissing and cuddling they headed back to his flat. They had consensual sex on a mattress on the floor before both fell asleep.
Mr Clarke woke feeling nauseous and went to the bathroom, vomiting there and falling asleep by the toilet.
In a police interview played to jurors the alleged victim outlined what happened next.
‘The next thing I remember I was having sex and thinking Joe was being cheeky,’ she said.
‘I’m such a heavy sleeper. I used to joke and say it would be the death of me.’
She claimed she had her eyes shut and that it was only when she felt the man’s hair and heard someone in an Australian accent saying ‘you are beautiful’ that she realised that it wasn’t Mr Clarke.
‘I kept saying “where is Joe?”,’ she said. ‘I grabbed my phone and locked myself in the en- suite. I rang my housemate and told them I had just been raped and sent them my location.
‘I snuck out and grabbed my clothes and went to look for Joe. I tried to wake him up and told him
Alex had raped me but he was out of it.’
Running outside she met a passer- by, who phoned police. In cross-examination, she accepted that her memory of the night was ‘hazy’, conceding that she did not have a ‘100 per clear’ memory of having consensual sex with Mr Clarke before the alleged rape.
Taking the stand, Hepburn directly challenged the victim’s version of events.
He denied the woman had been asleep when they started having sex, claiming she opened her eyes and kissed him at the start of a sexual encounter that lasted 20 minutes.
He explained that because ‘The Fellas’ had been due to stay over, he had arranged to share a bed with Mr Clarke.
He said he only realised there was a woman in it when he clambered naked under the duvet beside her.
At that point Hepburn claimed she ‘rolled’ towards him with her eyes open before they began kissing, adding that he did not think Mr Clarke would have minded him having sex with her.
They had what he claimed was consensual sex that suddenly ended when the woman pushed him off, calling him a ‘sick b******’ and telling him: ‘ You just raped me.’
Hepburn told the court: ‘My reaction was shock. I had not raped her. I believed what was happening was consensual sex.’
But prosecutor Miss Moore QC challenged his version of events, with Hepburn later admitting he had no recollection of the woman initiating sex.
Miss Moore accused the ‘arrogant’ cricketer of lying and said he had ‘taken a chance’ with his victim – ‘not only to get a score in the game but to get one over on your mate’.
Hepburn denied this was the case.
Miss Moore said the incident had to be seen through the prism of the ‘game’ the men had been playing.
‘This is a case about you, fired up by this “game” you were so keen to play with your mates, taking advantage of a girl that you knew was asleep in Joe’s bed,’ she said. Again Hepburn denied this to be the case.
As he broke down in tears, Miss Moore continued: ‘The reason you are crying now is the world knows how you behave.’
And she told the jury: ‘That is what this case is about, this defendant’s attitude to women.’
An attitude that shames not just him, but everyone involved in this tawdry case.