MAN FOUND GUILTY OF RAPING WOMAN BY RIVER WENSUM IN NORWICH
A jury convicted a man of raping a woman by the River Wensum, but cleared him of making threats to kill.The jury at Norwich Crown Court took almost ten hours to find Adrian Olley guilty of one count of rape.
They will return to court today to reach a verdict on a second rape charge.
Olley had denied the two charges of rape as well as one count of threats to kill which he was cleared of yesterday.
The 29-year-old of Woodbastwick Road, Blofield, attacked the woman after she shared a taxi with him following a night out in Norwich.
The victim, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, had been out in the city on June 8 and was in Prince of Wales Road at about 4.30am the next morning when someone called her name from a taxi.
She got into the cab, which was carrying the defendant and another woman, but asked the driver to let her out along Riverside Road following an argument between her and Olley.
The jury, of five men and seven women, heard the woman went down the steps at Bishop Bridge leading to a path next to the River Wensum.
Olley followed her and during the trial the court heard Olley 'picked her up in a bear hug and threw her in the river'.
She said he then dragged her out by her hair and onto the steps where he raped her despite her 'doing everything' she could to 'get him off me'.
Richard Potts, prosecuting, had closed the crown's case by describing how the woman had 45 separate injuries from the ordeal.
But in interviews read to the jury Olley claimed that the woman had consented to sex.
He said they had an argument and she had tried to hit him with a brick and clawed his side.
'She was going nuts and I think she stepped back and there was a bit of a tussle,' he said.
'She rolled and fell into the water.' He denied he had thrown her into the river and said: 'She was trying to hit me then she flipped over the railings.' Olley said that he had pulled her out of the river.
