JAIL FOR MAN WHO TWICE RAPED WOMAN HE ‘ABUSED ALL WEEKEND’
Content Advisory: This story contains details that may be upsetting to some readers.A sexual predator who plied his frightened victim with alcohol and drugs before raping her twice during an abuse-filled weekend has been jailed.
Neil Kennedy, 41, targeted his victim at his home in Keith, where she had agreed to stay because she trusted him.
Kennedy denied a charge that he assaulted the woman twice in one day, but following a trial at the High Court in Inverness, a jury returned a guilty verdict.
He was then sentenced today to six years and six months behind bars.
The jury heard that the woman, who was in her early twenties, visited Kennedy after he had supplied her with crack cocaine and whisky miniatures before the incident.
While she was there, Kennedy removed her clothes and put them in the washing machine, replacing them with lounge trousers and a T-shirt, as she decided to remain overnight.
In evidence led by the prosecutor, advocate depute James Irvine, she told jurors: “I didn’t mind sleeping in his bed because I trusted him.” But once the pair had retired to bed in the early hours of June 11 2022, Kennedy began to make advances that she rebuffed.
“He was insinuating about him and I having sex.
I said ‘no’ to him,” the woman said.
“He kept going on, saying something like ‘I know you want to, we both know you want this to happen’ and things like that.
“I had said several times ‘no’, and I didn’t want to.” She told the court the next thing she remembered was Kennedy pulling her trousers down and raping her.
“I kept saying ‘no’ – that is all I kept saying – ‘just stop, I don’t want this’,” she explained to jurors.
The woman kicked at Kennedy and tried to push him away but he was too strong to overcome.
She told the jury that the rape left her feeling “frozen” and added: “I couldn’t really do anything.” She said that she remained in Kennedy’s bed and was still there when police officers called at the property.
“I had moved to make a noise but he ended up putting a pillow over my face so I couldn’t do nothing,” she said.
“He made sure I couldn’t call for help.” The woman said she entered a state of “depression” following the rape, sleeping on and off in Kennedy’s bed before moving to the living room sofa at one point to “have a bit of space”.
She said Kennedy then asked what she was doing before placing her over his shoulder and carrying her back to his bed and raping her a second time.
Asked why she did not leave the flat when she had the chance, she replied: “I genuinely don’t know why I didn’t leave.
I think I was just too scared.” The woman said the attacks left her feeling “scared” and “sore” and it was not until two days later when Kennedy was sleeping that she retrieved her still-wet clothes from his washing machine and left the flat.
Once outside, she contacted her mother telling her what had happened, saying she had been “abused all weekend”.
In a text, she wrote: “Mum, I scared and I’m in agony” and reported the rapes to the police that same day.
Kennedy was arrested and at interview claimed to have spent the weekend elsewhere, although it was finally conceded at trial that he was, in fact, at home.
He denied sexual contact with his victim, telling police: “She is a liar, eh?” and “It’s not happened!” However, forensic testing found the woman’s DNA on his penis, the trial heard.
Kennedy gave no evidence in his own defence and the jury took less than two hours to convict him, finding him guilty of the rapes.
Following the verdict, Judge Summers told Kennedy that “the gravity of the offence” warranted “a meaningful custodial sentence”.
He followed through with that sentiment at sentencing when he imposed a six-and-a-half-year jail term.
Kennedy was also ordered to remain on the sex offenders register for an indefinite period.
He was also handed a non-harassment order, preventing him from contacting his victim.
