HUGGINS: RAPIST TELLS DOCTOR ATTACK WAS FIRST SEXUAL EXPERIENCE

A rapist who put a stranger through ‘every woman’s worst nightmare’ when he attacked her twice in three months believed that the woman was his girlfriend, a court heard today.

O’Niel Huggins, 20, is facing an indefinite jail sentence for the double rape of a 23-year-old woman in south London.

She chose not to report the first attack in April last year, but realised she had made a ‘terrible mistake’ when he raped her again three months later.

Huggins, who suffers from a mild learning disorder, was convicted in June this year, but continues to deny his guilt.

A doctor’s report produced in court said: ‘He believes the victim was his girlfriend.

‘He believed the victim wanted to have sexual intercourse with him and is not able to entertain the idea she was too scared to resist.’

Consultant psychiatrist Dene Robertson said Huggins had never had a girlfriend and had problems developing intimate relationships with others as a result of his learning difficulty.

‘His first experience of sexual intercourse was the rape of his victim,’ he wrote.

The rapist had also shown ‘extreme ‘extreme minimisation’ of the incident, saying he had even bought the woman a drink, said Dr Robertson, of the Bethlem Royal and Maudsley Hospitals.

Huggins is expected to be sent to a secure psychiatric unit under and interim hospital order for further reports on his mental state before being sentenced.

But prosecutor Paul Cavin argued that it was not his mental impairment that had led him to attack the woman.

‘It isn’t a mild retardation which caused this offence,’ he said.
 
‘On any view this is a dangerous man.’

The trial heard that Huggins was traced from an e-fit image created with the victim’s help and published in a national appeal, and his DNA also matched a sample taken from the woman.

When his home in Stockwell was searched, officers found hundreds of unused condoms.

Mr Cavin had told the jury: ‘It is no exaggeration to say that the case you are about to try constitutes every woman’s worst nightmare.

Huggins approached the woman as she walked home from a bus stop in Stockwell Road and ‘tried to engage her in conversation,’ said Mr Cavin.

Suddenly he grabbed her, forced her towards the side of a house and raped her.

The victim was on her way home from a party in the early hours of July 14 when she suffered the ‘sheer terror’ of spotting Huggins again.

As she walked home, Huggins again approached her and put his arm around her, telling her ‘You’re pretty,’ and ‘Don’t worry’ before attacking her again.

Huggins was arrested on October 9 after patrolling police recognised him in the street from the e-fit
image.

He refused to answer questions in interview but has claimed in a defence statement that she was willing.

Huggins, of Mawbey Street, Stockwell, southwest London, denied one count of rape between April 10 and 20 last year, and two further rape charges on July 14.

He was found guilty of the first and third charges of rape by a majority of 10-2, but jurors were unable to agree a verdict on third rape count alleged to have occurred on the second occasion.

The case was adjourned until August 23, when the judge is expected to make an interim hospital order.

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