Hotel Porter Sentenced to 10 Years in Jail for Raping TV Star
A hotel porter who was convicted of raping an unnamed TV star in her hotel room has been sentenced to 10 years in prison. Soby John, an Indian national who entered the UK on a student visa, attacked the woman while she was drunk and asleep.
The Southwark Crown Court heard that the celebrity, who is in her early 20s and was left unnamed for legal reasons, had been drinking heavily with her friends during the evening so she was "immobilised" and "unable to defend herself" when John, 25, entered her hotel room at the Hilton London Metropole in the early hours of October 24 last year.
After John saw her stumbling in the corridor and being helped to bed by a friend, he used his position as a porter in the hotel to get a copy of the electronic key to the victim's room.
"(The victim) had woken during the night to find an Asian man on top of her having sex with her," prosecutor Lesley Jones had been quoted by the Daily Mail as saying in the court. "She said she felt his hands on her neck as she pushed him away but then she drifted into unconsciousness."
John used a blue latex glove as a "crude" makeshift condom. After the gruesome act, he then took intimate photos of her on his phone and even recorded his number on her mobile phone to make the rape appear consensual.
He sent a text message from her phone to his, saying, "Hey John you enjoy me thanks."
Investigators identified him from the DNA found on the latex glove. He then admitted that he had sex with the woman, but claimed it was consensual in initial interviews.
He changed to a guilty plea in February.
John's defence insisted to court that he was just a "naive young man, floundering in a culture which he hadn't quite come to terms with," adding that it was just a "single, foolish act."
But Judge Alistair McCreath described the offence as a "wicked rape," leaving the victim with "massive anxiety" and "huge trust issues."
"I recognise you are relatively young and you were brought up in a different culture from the culture of the place where this terrible offence took place," the judge told John. "But whatever cultural values you were brought up with, I do not for a moment accept they condone the act of non-consensual intercourse with a woman who was so drunk as to be insensible."
John's student visa had expired. He will be deported to India after serving his sentence.