IVANOV: RUSSIANS FILMED GANG RAPE

Four Russian men filmed each other raping a teenage student on an iPhone just a fortnight after arriving in the UK, a court heard today (Thurs).

The 18-year-old girl was put through a two-and-a-half hour gang rape ordeal after she passed out drunk in the halls of residence at a prestigious south London college.

Oleg Ivanov and Gregory Andreev Melnikov, both 23, Norayr Davtyan, 22, and Armen Simonyan, 19,
are each accused of two counts of rape between January 20 and January 23.

All four claim the sex was consensual.

Woolwich Crown Court heard Davtyan described the teenager as a ‘whore’ and a ‘machine for f******’ after Ivanov said he pitied the girl as she lay crying on the bed.

Davtyan allegedly told the girl before she left: ‘You should not tell anyone because you would be the one who would be embarrassed. You would be ashamed.’

The night before the incident Davtyan, Ivanov and Simonyan videoed each other on their phones  bragging about what they intended to do to the girl.

Footage recovered from Davtyan’s iPhone was today played to the jury.

Prosecutor Peter Clement told the court: ‘[The charges] are counts which represent, say the prosecution these defendant’s conduct towards [their victim]

‘Knowing her to be incapacitated through intoxication, in all likelihood through drink, they took sexual advantage of her as a gang, or as individuals.

‘They could not care less about her wishes or indeed her well-being.

‘They wanted to have sex with her and they did.

‘Various members of this gang of four watched each other, encouraged each other, gave a running commentary as to what was going on and spoke excitedly as to what they had done and what they were going to do.

‘They referred to her merely in the abstract as ‘he’ or ‘she’.

‘On one occasion one of this gang of four even had to ask ‘What’s her name?’

Mr Clement told the court that on the night of January 21 a disco was being held at the college.

Davtyan was also said to have thrown an impromptu party, which the four men and their victim flitted between over the course of the evening.

Mr Clement said the girl had been to Davtyan’s room between 7pm and 8pm and downed a shot of whiskey, before she went back to the main building.

He said: ‘Not long after she left Mr Davtyan’s room she began to feel funny, dizzy, peculiar, and different to how she might usually feel.’

Jurors watched CCTV footage of the girl stumbling though the main entrance before later seeing clips of her in an outdoor smoking area talking to Ivanov and Melnikov.

She was later seen walking away from the smoking area with Melnikov when she was taken to the party at Davtyan’s flat.

At the flat Mr Clement said she was seen to vomit and lie down on the floor of the Russian student’s bedroom.

The court then heard that as the party wound down the teenager was left alone with the four men.

He said video footage recovered from Davtyan’s iPhone taken between 12.38am and 3.10am showed all four men taking advantage of the girl.

He said: ‘Video footage with sound as been recovered from Mr Davtyan’s phone.

‘It is that which forms the mainstay of the prosecution case.

‘It is real time evidence provided by the defendants themselves, not only of what they were doing to that girl but, importantly, also their attitude towards her and indeed how, in truth, she really was.

‘Relatively early on Mr Ivanov says is Russian ‘She’s crying’, it did not deter him or any of the others.

‘At one point Mr Ivanov said he felt pity for her, but this was only after he and the others had sex with her.

‘He was talked out of that attitude by Mr Davtyan who described [the girl] as just a whore and a machine for f******’.’

The court heard that the victim reported her ordeal to police the following day.

In interview she said she remembered going to Davtyan’s flat after the disco and having a second shot of whisky and being sick.

Mr Clement said: ‘The next thing she recalled was waking up, now naked, with Mr Davtyan on top of her having sexual intercourse.

‘She had not consented. She lacked the capacity, we  say, to consent and therefore the freedom to agree to what was happening.

‘She believed she said stop or something similar.’

The court heard the girl then ‘fell asleep’ again and woke to find a different defendant raping her from behind.

All four men were the heard to have forced her to perform a sex act on them, it was said.

She was heard to tell police: ‘I just wanted to close my eyes. I just wanted to die.’

After their arrest all four men gave differing accounts of the events of that night, but all four denied raping the girl and claimed any sex had been consensual.

Ivanov, Melnikov, Davtyan, Simonyan, all of Bounty House, Stowage, Deptford, southeast London, all deny two counts of rape.

The trial continues.
ends