ESSEX SONGWRITER IS CONVICTED OF RAPE AND VOYEURISM
Gareth Keane, 39, of Pynnacles Close in Stanmore, was found guilty of rape and voyeurism at Basildon Crown Court on Thursday, February 26.He has been remanded into custody to await sentence.
A jury heard allegations that he had subjected a sexual partner to repeated violent attacks, one so loud that a neighbour heard it and intervened.
The neighbour told the authorities he heard the woman through the walls “in a hysterical state, pleading with him [Keane]”.
“I remember her saying, ‘No, no, no, I don’t like that… Don’t do that’,” the neighbour recounted.
The victim said that attack occurred when Keane was “being nasty”, making degrading comments about her appearance.
She said she retorted that he was “a has-been” and “a one-hit wonder”.
“His eyes popped all out of his face,” she said.
“His whole demeanour and face changed.” He hit her in the mouth with the back of his hand, she said, and exclaimed: “I have accomplished more in my little finger than you have ever done in your whole life!” As she sat, shocked and crying, she said, he raped her.
“I didn’t even have a chance to say anything,” she said.
The victim broke free and ran to the bathroom, she said, but he chased her in there and continued the attack, grabbing her hair and pushing her against the window.
“Why do you have to be a bitch?” she remembered him shouting.
That was when her neighbour, who was putting his bins out, heard the commotion and telephoned her.
He offered to phone the police, she said, but she declined.
It was one of four occasions on which Keane was charged with raping his victim.
One, she said, was so brutal that she was left bleeding.
“I was in so much pain I couldn’t move,” she said.
Friends came to court and testified that the victim had disclosed sexual assaults to them at the time and they had seen her with injuries.
“On one occasion I went around and she had bruising on her face,” one witness said.
“She told me that he didn’t mean it and he was a lovely person.” The victim later explained: “I just didn’t want to get him in trouble.
I was in love with him.” But the jury only convicted Keane on one rape count – the one corroborated by the victim’s neighbour.
Keane told the jury the allegations had been made up “out of spite”.
The court heard the he and the victim had a long but secretive relationship, which the woman wanted to make official but Keane insisted on keeping casual.
“Most of the time together we were at my home,” she said.
“We didn’t really go out on dates.
We would spend time together drinking at home… Gareth never had any money for going out.” Sometimes weeks or months would pass and she wouldn’t see Keane at all, she said.
When she did, she said, he would insist on filming their sexual encounters, even though she asked him not to, and would sometimes do it without even telling her.
On several occasions, she said, he told her he was going to put the videos on the internet – and on one occasion, which she covertly audio recorded, he claimed he already had.
Keane accepted the recording was real but told the jury he had been joking.
The clandestine relationship ended, said the victim, when she received a phone call from a woman describing herself as Keane’s girlfriend, telling her that she and Keane lived together.
In a subsequent call, said the victim, she was left “disturbed” when the girlfriend began describing a sex tape between the victim and Keane.
“She was describing my bedroom to a tee,” she said.
The victim had also lent money to Keane – a fact he accepted at trial – and was outraged to learn he had seemingly spent some of it taking his girlfriend on holiday to Paris.
Keane contended his victim falsely accused him as payback for two-timing her.
But after roughly one day of deliberations, they declared him guilty of rape and voyeurism.
He will be sentenced in May.
