The Press and Journal (Inverness, Highlands, and Islands)
Serial rapist guilty of attacking girls
Aserial rapist groomed a 10-year-old girl by telling her he was dying of a mystery disease and needed help getting poison out of his system.
It was the start of a nightmare ordeal for the youngster and another girl at the hands of depraved Michael Waribo.
The 49-year-old has been found guilty of raping two girls “nearly every day” for more than a decade at addresses in Thurso and Dundee.
His cruel campaign of sexual abuse was brought to an end when his victims “broke free” of his manipulative, controlling ways and reported him to police.
Aberdeen High Court heard how Waribo lied and made up bizarre stories to cover up his crimes.
He told the mother of one of his victims how he had an “out-of-body experience” and saw himself having sex with her daughter.
He said that was why he needed to buy her a pregnancy test kit.
On another occasion, he was caught scrubbing his young victim’s blood off a carpet.
Waribo, of Leith Walk, Dundee, now faces prison after jurors found him guilty of four charges of multiple rapes, dating from May 2008 to May 2019.
He was also convicted of two charges of throttling his victims to the danger of their life and a charge of lewd, indecent and libidinous behaviour.
The court heard Waribo threatened his victims to keep them quiet, claiming their families would break up and everyone would hate them if they spoke out.
The trial heard Waribo began his 11-year campaign of abuse when he touched his first, pre-teen victim while she was taking a bath at a property in Thurso.
When later confronted by the child’s mother about the incident, Waribo said he was showing her how to wash herself and had “accidentally” touched her intimately.
A few days later, he called the same girl to an upstairs bedroom.
He told her he was dying of a disease and that she had to help him eject poison from his body.
She asked him if this was sex and he told her it was not.
The victim described how she was then raped “two, three or four times” a week for the next seven years.
Waribo’s second victim said she was raped “nearly every day” between May 2011 and May 2019 at properties in Thurso and Dundee.
Jurors heard Waribo was nearly caught raping the girl when her mother arrived at the address.
She entered the room to find Waribo using bleach to scrub his victim’s blood off the carpet.
The mother later told police Waribo had told her
he was checking to see if the girl was still a virgin. She replied: “What the f*** are you, a gynaecologist?”
Both victims recalled being throttled by Waribo during heated arguments.
Advocate Depute Chris Fyffe told jurors: “Violence, fear and manipulation – those are the conditions that allowed Mr Waribo to groom his victims.
“He created an atmosphere of violence – an oppressive atmosphere.
“He conditioned, he groomed and he laid the foundations for his abuse.”
The court heard his youngest victim suffered a urinary tract infection after he repeatedly raped her.
A witness told police when confronted about “having sex” with the youngsters, Waribo
confessed and begged for forgiveness.
Defence solicitor advocate Jim Keegan QC argued the evidence brought forward by prosecutors was not strong enough to convict his client and said some of the claims didn’t stack up.
He told jurors: “Based on the evidence, you would have to conclude that Mr Waribo must have been some kind of sexual athlete.
“He was said to have been involved in sexual activity with not one but two girls on a near-daily basis. Is that really tenable?”
Lord Harroway remanded Waribo in custody while he awaits sentence at the High Court in Edinburgh on August 16.
He told him: “These are very serious offences.”