Living it up with reality star, Britons accused of gang rape in Dubai
TWO men accused of gang raping a British woman in Dubai posed for a smiling selfie with a reality TV star days after their arrest, it emerged yesterday.
Dave Butlin, 22, and 24-year-old Louis Harris were held for the alleged attack as they tried to board a plane home last month.
But after being questioned and bailed, they were pictured on sun loungers at a beach club with James Argent, who stars in reality show The Only Way is Essex.
It is understood the men – believed to be cousins – strenuously deny the claims. Their alleged victim complained to police but instead of receiving help she was thrown in jail for having sex outside marriage.
The woman, a 25-year-old IT consultant who is separated from her husband of two years, had stopped in the United Arab Emirates on her way to Australia where she was hoping to start a new life.
She went for a drink with Butlin and Harris – a footballer who lives with his parents in a £700,000 rural property near Lichfield, Staffordshire – but they allegedly attacked her and filmed it on a mobile phone.
Detained in the Gulf state after having her passport confiscated, the woman’s family say she is the victim but is being treated like a criminal by the Dubai authorities.
Photographs posted on Argent’s Instagram page last week show the 28-year-old with Harris and Butlin at the exclusive Blue Marlin Club, which is inspired by the beach clubs on the party island of Ibiza. The caption read. ‘The Brummie boys.’ Harris and Butlin, a businessman and market trader who also lives with his parents in a £600,000 property in a plush gated community in Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands, have also had to surrender their passports and cannot leave the UAE until the case is closed.
A relative of Harris, a former academy player with Wolverhampton Wanderers who now plays for Walsall Wood in the Midlands Football League, admitted it was a ‘difficult’ time. She said: ‘All I’ll say is that he’s a really lovely boy.
‘We can’t comment further but it’s a difficult time.’ Legal sources said all three Britons, who are receiving
‘Petrified and fearful’
assistance from the Foreign Office, could face up to a year in prison. They face a charge of consensual sex outside marriage and also of being drunk, which is illegal in Dubai even though consuming alcohol is not.
The source said prosecutors might add a further charge of filming sex. ‘The investigations remain pending and are subject to further developments,’ said the source.
In the UAE, it is illegal for married people to have sex out of wedlock.
It is also forbidden for a single person to have sex with someone who is married. A huge number of Westerners visit Dubai every year and it is relatively rare for Britons to fall foul of its morality laws. But the Foreign Office has said Britons are proportionately more likely to be arrested there than any other country.
Radha Stirling, of Detained in Dubai, said the UAE had a long history of failing to deal properly with allegations of rape.
‘We have been involved with several cases in the past where this has happened, and we work with the lawyers and families and have campaigned to change attitudes in the police and judiciary.
‘Recent cases... show that it is still not safe for victims to report these crimes to the police without the risk of suffering a double punishment.’ A spokesman for ITV said Argent did not wish to comment. There is no suggestion that he is suspected of any crime.
The alleged rape took place at the Ramada Plaza Jumeirah Beach hotel in Dubai, where the two men were staying.
The £160-a-night hotel is set back a few hundred yards from the sea. It has a pub-style bar on the ground floor and a coffee shop, and there are CCTV cameras virtually everywhere.
The incident is understood to have happened on October 23, but the arrests did not take place until October 25. The woman described her ordeal to detectives, but instead of helping her she was charged with having extra-marital sex and her passport was taken.
She was bailed after spending days in jail and is now forbidden from leaving the Gulf state. In posts on social media the woman, who is living with an English family in a ‘safe’ house, revealed she is ‘petrified’ and ‘fearful’.
Relatives at home have mounted a social media campaign to raise legal funds. They say she needs at least £24,000 and last night £12,000 had already been donated.