A “callous and brutal” rapist has been given an extended prison sentence for attacking a woman he met on a night out in Brighton
Darrell Moore, 34, and a friend met two girls at the end of a night out and went back to the home of one of the girls, a jury heard at Hove Crown Court.
She and Moore’s friend went to her room while Moore was left alone with the victim who cannot be identified by law.
Thomas Cleeve, prosecuting, said that Moore raped the woman twice and sexually assaulted her twice in the early hours of Sunday 15 May 2022.
Moore pleaded not guilty to two charges of rape and two counts of sexual assault – but a jury found him guilty at the end of a trial in October.
His barrister, Jeffrey Lamb, said that, a few years ago, Moore had a “sensory processing disorder” diagnosed.
Mr Lamb said: “His brain struggles to deal with sensory input on occasions. There has been no formal diagnosis. It sometimes leads to difficulty in social situations.”
Judge David Rennie said that Moore had “no excuse, no mitigation whatsoever and (had shown) no remorse whatsoever”.
Judge Rennie said: “It was a callous and brutal act of domination in which her rights and feelings were trashed, rather like you trashed her body.
“To make matters worse, you chose to put her through the ordeal of a criminal trial.”
Mr Cleeve read a statement from the victim to the court at a sentencing hearing on Friday 23 January.
The woman said: “A part of me was taken that night I don’t think I’ll ever get back. I’ve been trapped in one moment for three and a half years.”
As a result, she said, “opportunities have been lost” and, despite having been bubbly before that attack, she had lost her confidence.
She added: “Initially all I felt was numb. It took me a while before I could feel any emotion again and when I did all I could feel was pain.”
She described herself as a broken 22-year-old – she is now 26 – and said: “When this finally draws to a close, I will finally breathe again.”
Moore, who was 30 at the time of the offences, had a number of previous convictions, Mr Cleeve, said. Most of them were for non-sexual offences such as having a taser and drug dealing.
If he’d been given an adequate prison sentence for the previous rape he would still have been in prison.
What previous rape? It takes a long time for these incidents to go to trial, and for people like him to be found guilty. The first incident happened in May 2022, the incident with the child happened last year.