2015: WOMAN WEEPS IN COURT AS MAN WHO RAPED HER IN ALVECHURCH NEARLY 30 YEARS AGO IS FINALLY JAILED
Professional burglar Steven Hearl, now a balding and bespectacled 63-year-old, was sentenced to six years and four months at Worcester Crown Court for the sex attack he carried out in an Alvechurch cornfield when he was 35 and she was 16.Hearl, who had a long list of convictions for theft offences, was caught in July when a "cold case" review matched his DNA and he confessed to rape, indecent assault and attempted buggery.
In a letter read to the court, he said what he had done was "disgusting and wicked" and hoped his conviction and sentence would allow the woman to move on.
Paul Whitfield, prosecuting, said Hearl was in the area looking for houses to rob and grabbed her as she walked home.
He pushed her through a hedge into a cornfield, blindfolding her with her own clothing, sexually assaulted her and raped her while she shouted at him to stop.
He then lay alongside her and told her not to move for 30 minutes so he could make his escape.
She went home and told her mother but her ordeal did not end there, the court heard.
Rumours in the town and the fear she might come across the stranger - whose face she had not seen - forced her to leave.
Judge Nicolas Cartwright said "for reasons he could not begin to imagine" she had not been believed.
He said the woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, had to leave her job, her relationship with her family was damaged and she is still suffering from the emotional harm.
"All of that because of what you did to her," he told Hearl.
"She was criticised, insulted and accused of lying.
Twenty eight years too late those doubters and cynics have been proved wrong." He said Hearl was remorseful but if he had not been caught by the DNA he would have "simply carried on with his life" without confessing.
