A man has been convicted of raping a woman under Hungerford Bridge after she was attacked as she made her way home alone.
Moustafa Elbohy, 32, was found guilty at Southwark Crown Court of two counts of rape today, Thursday 13 November. He was remanded into custody and is due to be sentenced on 17 November.
The court heard the incident happened last year, after the woman — who was travelling home alone — came across Elbohy among a group of people at Embankment station. She was, the court was told, “definitely drunk” but “with it” enough to find her way home, and she approached the group because she was interested in the language they were speaking, Arabic, as there “is a lovely Middle Eastern community” where she lived. She did not speak or understand the language, and the prosecutor, Richard Milne, confirmed she had not felt threatened by Elbohy at that point.
The woman recalled walking a short distance from the station to a “dark and dingy” place which appeared to be under Hungerford Bridge. Mr Milne told jurors there was a wall which, she said, Elbohy dragged her over, and tents made of tarpaulin-type material, blue and crinkly, where homeless people were living — one of whom looked very unwell, lying on the ground.
The bridge, which carries railway lines into Charing Cross, runs alongside the Thames at Embankment, one of the busiest stretches of the river in central London. The attack happened in the shadows beneath it, in a spot the court heard was used by people sleeping rough.
Elbohy then used Google Translate to tell her he wanted sex with her, the court heard. The court was told Elbohy was among a group of Arabic speakers, and he used the translation app on his phone to communicate with the woman, who spoke no Arabic.
The prosecution said she was so scared of what might happen — particularly if she screamed, that he might hurt her — that she tried to calm him down. “She described a very angry man and she was trying to play nice to calm his anger down. She described him as an extremely volatile man,” Mr Milne said.
“She knew she was going to be raped and she just wanted to get it over and done with as quickly as possible,” the prosecutor told the court. Jurors heard how the woman put “her mind in another place” as she was pushed to the ground during the attack.
Mr Milne told the court the woman had feared how she would be perceived because she had been drinking and had not screamed during the ordeal. The woman cannot be named, under the lifetime anonymity granted to complainants in sex-offence cases.
Elbohy was remanded into custody after the jury returned its verdicts. His sentencing at Southwark Crown Court on 17 November will bring the case to a close.
Embankment station, where the woman first came across Elbohy, sits a short walk from Hungerford Bridge on the north bank of the Thames, serving the Circle and District lines. Southwark Crown Court, where the trial was heard, sits on the south bank of the river and hears serious criminal cases from across south London. Elbohy will return there on 17 November to be sentenced for the two counts of rape.
The case is the latest in a series of sex-offence trials to reach a verdict in London’s courts. On Tuesday, a man was cleared of kidnapping and sex offences after an attack in an alleyway in Lee. It follows the conviction of a London rabbi for sexual assault earlier this week.
