Three teenagers were cleared of raping a 12-year-o
Three teenagers were cleared of raping a 12-year-old schoolgirl behind a high street shop by an Old Bailey jury today.
(Weds)
The three 18-year-old boys had been accused of attacking the youngster after they saw her walking through Feltham swigging from a bottle of whisky.
The prosecution alleged the girl was carried in a ‘fireman’s lift’ to an area behind Baker’s Oven in the town centre and raped by the teenagers.
She later claimed one of the boys, Paul Cooper, laughed as she pleaded with them to let her go during the 40-minute ordeal.
But a jury today cleared Cooper, Michael Hills and
Erkut Ahmet, all 18, of raping the 12-year-old between April 10 and April 11 last year.
The three teenagers were also cleared of indecent assault and imprisoning the girl.
Giving evidence Hills said he befriended the 12-year-old when he saw her swigging from a half-drunk bottle of Jack Daniels.
He admitted carrying the girl behind the shop for privacy but was joined by friends Cooper and Ahmet.
He said she ‘willingly’ performed a sex act on him and then had intercourse with Cooper and Ahmet.
Hills described her as being ‘flirty and dirty’.
He said she called herself a ‘rough rider’ in a reference to the girls controversial rap star DMX has with him.
Cooper told the court the girl consented to sex after telling him and his friends: ‘I’ll take youse all on.
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He added: ‘She looked about 16.
She didn’t look 12.
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Ahmet too maintained the girl played a willing part in what went on behind the shop.
Cooper and Hills sobbed as the not guilty verdicts were announced after 25 hours and 42 minutes.
When they passed a bottle of soft drink to one another the Common Serjeant of London, Judge Peter Beaumont glared at Hills and said: ‘If that defendant doesn’t drinking that bottle of coke I will have him arrested for contempt.
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The defendants also had to be told to keep quiet after they were acquitted.
Cooper, of Rolls Road; Hills, of Avondale Square, Old Kent Road; and Ahmet, of Marchart Court, Cooper’s Road, all in Bermondsey, had denied rape, indecent assault and false imprisonment between April 10 and 11, 2002.
A fourth teenager John Kavanagh, 19, of Cooper’s Road, was earlier found not guilty of taking part in the attack on the judge’s direction.
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