JOSEPH THOMAS

AN alleged abuser told police he enjoyed sexual roleplay where he played a daddy raping a little girl, a court has heard.

Council worker Joseph Thomas, 37, of London Road, Stanford-le-Hope, is on trial over allegations he sexually attacked a woman in Basildon.

The defendant – a mechanic for Redbridge Council in east London – is charged with rape, sexual assault, criminal damage and assault occasioning actual bodily harm (ABH), all involving one female complainant.

“You will hear a number of disturbing features of the defendant’s attitude to women and consent,” prosecutor Jerry Hayes told a jury of six men and six women at Basildon Crown Court yesterday.

The jury will see messages in which he describes “beating girls with whips until they are bleeding and crying”, the barrister said – and discussed his enjoyment of “consensual non-consent” roleplay.

“He is accused of putting his arm around her throat and throwing her into a television unit after she refused him sex.

The woman told police she had consensual sex with Thomas and went to sleep, but was then woken at around 4.30am by him having sex with her.

She claimed she repeatedly told him to stop and that she didn’t want it.

Mr Hayes said: “Did he have a reasonable cause to believe she was consenting?

Or was he just satisfying his sexual appetites despite her clear protestation?

These are matters for you.

“A woman has to have capacity to consent.

If she’s asleep, she cannot have that capacity.” Among the “disturbing” details they will hear about Thomas’s attitude to consent, the prosecutor alleged, is that “he has a daddy-daughter rape fetish”.

He would ask a woman “to pretend to be a child and say she didn’t want daddy to do it.” He would tell the woman, “Let daddy rape you,” the barrister claimed.

Arrested last year, he told police “that he enjoys daddy-daughter rape fetish foreplay and he has done this with many women and it was great,” the prosecutor continued.

Asked by police whether he would stop having sex with a woman if she told him to stop, he allegedly responded it “depends on whether a girl likes me to continue while she says stop”.

“This is why I use safe words rather than no,” he reportedly told police.

“’Don’t’ and ‘stop’ mean nothing.” He told police he thought he and his accuser had a conversation where she said she liked to be woken up by sex, but couldn’t remember, Mr Hayes told the trial.

“He said people can pre-consent before they go to sleep,” he continued.

“When asked if he had had sex with the complainant without her consent, he said, ‘I don’t know’.” The trial is set to last four days.