A serial rapist shrugged and smiled at the public gallery as he was jailed to 22 years for strangling and threatening to kill five young women.
Amateur American Football player George De Bathe raped and abused the women before blaming their injuries on rough sex.
The 25-year-old used emotional blackmail and intimidation to control the women physically, sexually and emotionally, the judge said.
His offending started while he was still at school with his first victim saying she met De Bathe when she was in secondary school, aged 15.
He carried on offending even after he had been arrested and put under a restraining order in 2019.
Described as a psycho by one victim, De Bathe controlled every aspect of the lives of five young women one after the other including telling them how to dress, what to eat, where they could go and who they were allowed to speak to.
He showed no emotion during a sentencing hearing at Portsmouth Crown Court and stared straight ahead and showed no emotion as the five young women took to the stand.
After he was sentenced to 17 years in prison with an extended licence period of five years, De Bathe shrugged his shoulders and smiled towards the public gallery as he was taken down.
Amateur American Football player George De Bathe raped and abuse five women before blaming their injuries on rough sex
After he was sentenced to 17 years in prison with an extended licence period of five years, De Bathe shrugged his shoulders and smiled towards the public gallery as he was taken down
De Bathe was found guilty of 24 counts including, rape, ABH, sexual assault, coercive control, making a threat to kill and false imprisonment
De Bathe was found guilty of 24 counts including, rape, ABH, sexual assault, coercive control, making a threat to kill and false imprisonment.
The trial jury accused De Bathe, who chose not to give evidence in his defence, of trying to intimidate them and criticised him for smirking during the trial.
He will spend at least two thirds of the 17 years in prison.
The five women spoke of how he had controlled, abused and raped them, cutting them off from family and friends.
He demanded they wear ‘slutty’ clothes and insisted they obeyed his rules.
One young woman was strangled when she took a pregnancy test after being raped by De Bathe, he then held a knife to her throat and threatened to kill her.
He was described as a narcissist who took sexual gratification from hurting, humiliating and controlling his victims.
‘You enjoyed inflicting pain and humiliation on your victims,’ the judge William Ashworth said.
Salesman De Bathe, described as a manipulative monster, claimed to be on a £150,000 salary and told one woman he was a psycho when he was off his meds.
The judge told De Bathe despite being from a stable background and very well educated, he had ample opportunity to stop his offending.
‘You moved without significant pause from victim to victim.
‘It was clear you were aware you were mistreating your first victim even as you began another relationship.’
The judge told De Bathe he was ‘callous, cold and calculating’ and that he has a chameleon nature being able to change his persona seemlessly.
‘You were able to evaluate the consequences of your actions,’ he said.
‘You have the ability to present yourself as someone who is well meaning, well intentioned.
‘Behind that there is someone who is able to offend.’
De Bathe bragged to his father about putting women in their place and intimidated his mother, the judge said.
His mother Amanda De Bathe told police: ‘George admits he gets angry when he doesn’t get his needs met.’
Despite fears over his increasingly worrying behaviour, his family did nothing the judge said.
‘No one in that household chose to stop you,’ he said.
‘The entirety of the focus is on protecting you and not on the terrible trauma you inflicted on the victims in this case.
‘You are a dangerous offender who has shown little or no remorse.’
The five women took to the stand at Portsmouth Crown Court and spoke of how he had controlled, abused and raped them, cutting them off from family and friends
De Bathe from Chichester, West Sussex, forced young women into restraints and blamed the injuries they suffered on consensual rough sex.
When one young woman told De Bathe she did not want to be tied up, he told her: ‘Oh don’t be silly you’ll enjoy it and you will eventually start to love it.’
Prosecutor Diana Wilson said De Bathe then tied her up and told her to be quiet while he raped her.
De Bathe told police the sex was consensual and bruising around her neck happened when she said ‘choke me, Daddy’.
His first victim, who said she met De Bathe when she was in secondary school, described how he used emotional pressure and threatened to kill himself during lengthy phone calls at night.
She told how she had to hide the relationship from her family and lost friends with De Bahte brainwashing her into thinking what he was doing was right.
‘I was so broken from what he had done to me,’ she said.
‘I didn’t know who I was.’
His second victim said her self confidence was completely broken down by De Bathe.
‘I didn’t recognise who I was,’ she said.
‘I carry so much guilt, fear and shame,’ she told the court.
His third described horrific memories which caused her physical and emotional damage.
‘I was completely indoctrinated,’ she said.
‘I was riddled with fear. He is a narcissistic and dangerously manipulative man.
‘If I did not walk into that police station, I’m sure he would have murdered me.’
The fourth young woman said she felt trapped and constantly on edge during her relationship with De Bathe.
‘I feel I’ve lost a part of myself. I still cannot believe I became trapped in a controlling relationship.
‘Every day I work hard to recover. He is an extremely dangerous and manipulative person who needs to be stopped.’
The final victim said she was confident and strong before meeting De Bathe.
‘I was made to feel small and worthless. I’m not the person I once was and the scars remain,’ she said.
‘It was not love, it was abuse.’
De Bathe, who played amateur American Football as a running back, would cut up their clothes, demanded access to their phones and social media accounts and insisted on written apologies if they broke any of his rules.
He would make up to 70 calls a day to the young women and bombard them with late night messages.
The five young women, who cannot be named for legal reasons, had all been in relationships with De Bathe.
One woman told police the controlling behaviour started while they were both still at secondary school.
Ms Wilson said: ‘He wanted her to look “slutty” when she was with him but more conservative when he was not there.’
De Bathe would often threaten to kill himself in order to control the women and use physical interactions to exercise his dominance over the women.
One of the women told another: ‘He’s turned out to be psycho and used to hurt me a lot.’
Friends of the women described their relationship with De Bathe as manipulating and controlling and reported seeing bruising and cuts.
In a conversion with one of the women, De Bathe said: ‘I’m psycho when I don’t take my meds.’
The young women described how De Bathe pressured them into taking nude or topless pictures of themselves which he would use to manipulate them later.
Some of the women were under age when they took pictures of themselves.
He told one woman he filmed them having sex without her consent.
In one late night Facebook message, De Bathe wrote: ‘If you leave it now I won’t be fine tomorrow unless you have a massive fucking apology for how you’ve been tonight.
‘IDK wtf is up with you tonight but I’m expecting a massive fucking apology in the morning, a huge fucking para.’
In another post, he wrote: ‘Take down your seductive story right now.
‘Its still up, remove it.’
Ms Wilson said some of the women were in contact with each other before going to police.
‘They were trying to protect other women from George De Bathe,’ she said.
One of the five women said the abuse carried on despite telling De Bathe she was gay and was not interested in a relationship with him or any other man.
She told police she would have to give him her chair and stand behind him if they were out.
He also made her send messages every five minutes and financially ruined her by demanding presents, she add.
She added that she lost consciousness on three occasions because he was so violent.
One evening when De Bathe was watching American Football on TV and thought his girlfriend was not showing enough interest in the game he dragged her off the settee and threatened to stab her with a kitchen knife.
On another occasion, De Bathe drove to another county where he confronted one of the five young women.
‘He grabbed her by the throat, ripped out her hair and put his hand over her mouth to stop her screaming,’ Ms Wilson said.
‘He smashed up her flat and said he would stab her.’
Some victims were stopped from going to work, were tracked through their mobile phones and locked in his car while he drove dangerously.
De Bathe was first arrested in March 2019 but he met and started to abuse the fifth young woman after being spoken to by police.
He was arrested again in April and November the same year.
‘Even after he was arrested and interviewed in relation to his earlier offences.
‘This abuse become more and more extreme. The witnesses were clearly damaged by the abuse.
‘The overall picture is a compelling one when looked at as a whole,’ Ms Wilson said.
Between 2015 and 2019, De Bathe, of North Mead in Chichester, subjected the victims to a catalogue of physical, sexual and psychological violence.
All of the victims are now women in their 20s, but were in their mid to late teens at the time of the offending.
In April, 2018, one of the victims reported to Sussex Police she had been abused by de Bathe over a period of several months.
Detective Constable Jon Petroulas said: ‘George de Bathe has shown a clear pattern of manipulating women, before revealing his violent, controlling and sexually abusive tendencies.
‘Each of these women’s lives was made a misery by de Bathe, and they must live with the trauma of his crimes.
‘They have shown incredible courage to share their experiences with Sussex Police and support what has been a long and complex investigation through to its conclusion.
Deputy Officer in Charge, Detective Constable Maddie Ursell, said: ‘This case is another reminder of the importance of schemes such as Clare’s Law, which allows the police to disclose if a new partner has a violent criminal history.’
Karen Cushing from the Crown Prosecution Service said: ‘George De Bathe subjected these women to significant pressure and manipulation, often threatening them and, on occasions, following through on those threats with physical violence.
‘None of us can imagine the terror they experienced as a result of his controlling and coercive behaviour, ensuring that once he had cut them off from those closest to them, he could then dictate every part of their lives and even depriving them of sleep.
‘The appalling impact that he had on the victims was clear from both their testimony and from those who were closest to them, who all talked about the changes in the behaviour they had seen in their loved ones.
‘We would like to thank the victims in this case for speaking out.
‘Despite claiming to one woman that the police couldn’t touch him and that we would never prosecute him, with their evidence, we were able to build a strong and compelling case against De Bathe to bring him to justice on behalf of the women that he tried so hard to manipulate and control.’
