An ‘extremely vulnerable’ woman was gang-raped by three asylum seekers who laughed and spat at her while filming the sickening ordeal, a court heard.
The alleged attackers were said to have treated her like ‘meat’, dragging her onto pebbles in a secluded part of Brighton beach, where they took in turns to rape her.
The woman, who cannot be identified, said she was drifting in and out of consciousness during the assault.
Two of the three asylum seekers are charged with carrying out the physical rape while the third defendant is charged with four counts of rape by encouraging what happened.
Opening the prosecution case, Hanna Llewellyn-Waters said the alleged victim, who is in her thirties, was ‘pretty much incapacitated’ and on her own after getting separated from her friend when she was raped in the early hours of October 4 last year.
She told the jury: ‘Instead of offering her help or even just leaving her be, these defendants targeted her.
‘And that targeting was not founded in good will or bonhomie, high spirits – it was cynical, predatory and callous. And frankly, to these defendants, (she) was meat, she was there to be used as a receptacle, and that’s what they did.
‘She was repeatedly abused for their sexual gratification and entertainment. And that entertainment which was obtained in part through her degradation.’
Karin Al-Danasurt, 20, denies recording the woman as she was being attacked by him and two other men
The prosecutor added: ‘They wanted sex and that, members of the jury, could be achieved by being with someone who was in no state to resist them.’
Iranian Abdulla Amih Ahmadi, 26, of Crewe, and Egyptian Ibrahim Alshafe, 25, of Lower Beeding, Horsham, are each alleged to have raped the woman twice.
Karin Al-Danasurt, 20, an Egyptian, also of Lower Beeding, is accused of filming the attacks and is alleged to have later shared the footage.
The court heard they were residents of Cisswood House Hotel in Horsham, Home Office-approved accommodation for those either seeking or appealing their asylum and immigration status.
The prosecutor said the defendants took the woman ‘away from the relative safety’ of the main drag, and onto a pebbled area of the beach near a wall.
The court heard the woman was unable to stand, having spent several hours drinking with her friends.
‘At that stage she was falling over drunk,’ the prosecutor said. ‘And what I mean by that is she was unable to maintain her balance and without proper control over her limbs.’
She was then raped repeatedly, the court heard.
Ibrahim Alshafe, 25, is accused of raping a woman who was also attacked by two other men
The court heard she thought that she may have been filmed and there was a male looking down on her.
She said she could hear men about her head ‘laughing’ whilst another man was abusing her.
Ms Llewellyn-Waters said: ‘She remembers being grabbed – her mouth being grabbed and opened with it being spat in by the man filming.’
The court heard the woman was offered drugs earlier in the evening, but declined. However, she may have been spiked, jurors were told.
In her interview with police, the woman said: ‘I’ve been drunk many a time, I’ve never had this like feeling before.
‘I could see a light in my face, like, do you know, like, when you put a flash on a, like, on the camera on an iPhone and I could hear a foreign accent saying: “Dirty bitch, dirty bitch”.’
She said it was ‘as if [her] soul was leaving [her] body’.
Friends who spoke to the woman on the phone in the aftermath described how she was ‘absolute(ly) wailing’ as she recalled what happened.
The judge, Her Honour Christine Henson KC, previously told jurors the complainant has accepted voluntarily consuming alcohol prior to the alleged rape.
But she warned jurors not to ‘fall into the trap’ of thinking someone is ‘less worthy of belief’ if they had drunk alcohol or, in some cases, taken illegal drugs.
The trial continues. The defendants deny all charges.
