You treated her like a piece of meat
Judge’s tirade as he jails cricketer who raped his sleeping victim
A CRICKETER who believed he was ‘God’s gift to women’ has been jailed for five years for raping his victim as she slept.
Alex Hepburn treated her like a ‘piece of meat’ as part of a sordid game of sexual conquests, a judge told him yesterday.
The Australian-born all-rounder was in competition with two friends who bragged about their sex sessions in a WhatsApp text messaging group.
He met the victim at a champagne bar and she returned to the flat he shared with then-Worcestershire teammate Joe Clarke. She had consensual sex with Mr Clarke, but when he went to be sick Hepburn, 23, got into bed with her.
She was asleep and 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. The woman, also 23, told yesterday how she had been left devastated by the attack and the trauma of having to give evidence at his trial twice after a jury initially failed to reach a verdict.
Describing the agony at being quizzed about intimate details by barristers, she said: ‘Having to go through one trial to be made out a liar is humiliating.’
In a moving personal impact statement the victim, who cannot be named, told the court: ‘I’m flooded with guilt that I can’t ever seem to escape.
‘Now all the people I care and love have had to suffer as well. All because of this evil. I struggle with anxiety. It is something the rapist brought on. I’ve always had a happy-golucky attitude, very carefree.
‘I mourn for who I used to be. I can’t remember the last time I went anywhere without creating a mental escape plan, just in case.’
Hepburn, who made his debut for Worcestershire in 2015, was born and educated in Western Australia, but is also a British passport holder. He arrived for his sentencing hearing at court yesterday with his girlfriend Lucy Street, who was seen stroking his face in the foyer.
Friends say the Nottingham Trent university student, who has been with Hepburn for about 17 months, has vowed to stick by him. Hepburn had denied two counts of rape, saying he had consensual sex with the woman in April 2017.
But a jury found him guilty last month of one count of rape. He was cleared of the second. The tawdry game of sexual conquests Hepburn was playing with Mr Clarke was described to jurors.
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.
His contract with Worcestershire County Cricket Club has run out.
Mr Clarke, 22, an England Lions cricketer considered one of the best young prospects in the game, has since moved counties.
Jailing Hepburn at Hereford Crown Court, Judge Jim Tindal said: ‘She had not shown the slightest interest in you.
‘You thought you were God’s gift to women and at that moment you saw her as a piece of meat.
‘Sex is not always done through love but it is something people do together. Sex is never something a man does to a woman, arrogantly assuming her consent. Your pathetic, sexist game was to collect as many sex encounters as possible. You had done it the previous year. You probably thought it was laddish behaviour. In truth it was foul sexism, it demeaned women and trivialised rape.’
The judge praised the victim saying: ‘She has been incredibly brave to come forward against such a well-known man.’
‘Flooded with guilt I can’t seem to escape’