Man guilty of city alleyway rape
A ROCHDALE man been found guilty of rape after a sobbing woman was attacked in Piccadilly Gardens.
Juan Quinones, 24, and Brian Jalo, 25, both raped the woman, who had travelled to the city with a friend for a weekend shopping trip.
Manchester Crown Court heard the woman was attacked in an alleyway near the Gardens.
She had met Jalo and Quinones, of Rochdale, in the city centre the day before, and had exchanged Instagram details with Jalo.
The following day, the friends spent the afternoon shopping and drinking in the city centre.
At about 8pm she made her way into Piccadilly
Gardens alone after having an argument with her friend.
She later came to meet
Jalo and Quinones.
The men were captured on CCTV in the alleyway.
Prosecutors said the pair had ‘formed the intention’ to get the ‘intoxicated’ woman ‘alone in that state.’
Jalo and Quinones both raped her in the alleyway.
“She tells the police that she was crying and saying no,” prosecutor Robert Wyn Jones said. The attack lasted six minutes, and after the defendants were said to ‘greet each other with fist-bumps.’
The victim was ‘visibly distressed and dishevelled’ and ‘unsteady on her feet.’
She went back to the hotel and told her friend that she’d been raped. She gave evidence in court and after it was suggested that she’d been a ‘willing participant,’ the woman told jurors: “I asked them repeatedly to stop.” Jalo and Quinones both claimed the woman had consented to sex. Giving evidence through a Spanish interpreter, Quinones claimed the woman had been ‘smiling’ and ‘laughing out loud’ during the attack.
Jalo, of Sugar Mill Street in Salford; and Quinones, of Sarsfield Close in Manchester, were found guilty of two counts of rape, and not guilty of a further count of rape. A third man, 21-year-old Justice Tandoh, of Davenport Street in Tameside, denied aiding and abetting rape and sexual assault. He was found not guilty on all charges.
After the hearing, Ruby Mckeague, Senior Crown
Prosecutor for the North West Rape and Serious Sexual Offences Unit said: “Brian Peter Jalo and Juan Quinones clearly pose a significant danger to woman. They acted together to lure a woman to a secluded area in order to rape her. They have shown no remorse and put the woman through the further ordeal of making her re-live what happened to her by giving evidence at a trial.
“Today after careful consideration of the evidence we presented to the jury, including CCTV evidence, they have today found them guilty.
“I would like to thank the woman for supporting the prosecution of this case which has helped us bring these men to justice for their despicable actions.”