From the Oxford Mail with additional reporting from Charlie Peters of GB News who was present in court.
An Iranian asylum seeker was in tears in the dock as he was jailed for more than 10 years for raping a 15-year-old girl in Oxford city centre. Amin Abedi Mofrad, of Mill Lane, Reading, was charged with two offences, in relation to an incident near the Westgate centre on Valentine’s Day last year.
Abedi Mofrad, 35, denied one count of rape and one count of assault by penetration.
However, he was found guilty of both counts by a jury at Oxford Crown Court on Tuesday, October 7.
At the start of his sentencing on November 13, Abedi Mofrad started shouting in the dock: “I don’t rape anybody. It’s a lie. I’m innocent.” Mofrad entered the dock before crying and shouting “you can give me a thousand years it is no problem. I’m innocent. I swear to God my trousers no coming down.”
He broke down in tears and Judge Maria Lamb threatened to send him back to the custody cells.
The court previously heard the complainant had been attending a rave with a friend for 15 to 18-year-olds at The Bridge Nightclub in Hythe Bridge Street. . . After leaving McDonald’s the girls went towards the Westgate and came across two men, Abedi Mofrad and his friend, Syed Barzegar, who he was stabbed by earlier this year, sitting on a bench in Queen Street.
It was after this that the sexual assaults took place.
Mr Upward told the court that Abedi Mofrad had a number of previous convictions for violence in Germany, which were committed between 2014 and 2019.
He said: “He came to the UK in an illegal boat passage across The Channel.
In the trial, Mr Upward said: “He kissed her and bit her ear. The men subjected both girls to unwanted groping. The defendant continued the assault, forcing his fingers into her vagina. She tried to stop him. She says he forced her to the ground and said ‘I want you to be our sex doll’. He forced her to her knees and forced his penis into her mouth. This was for his own criminal gratification.”
Mofrad gestured to reporters, saying: “You can type all you like, everything is lie about me.”
Judge Maria Lamb viewed Abedi Mofrad as being a danger to woman and jailed him for nine and a half years with an additional three on extended licence.
Amin Abedi Mofrad was emotionless when being sentenced but as he left the dock he shouted “everybody is liar, liar, liar.”
Update
The victim was not allowed to read her impact statement in court last week. Charlie Peters at GB news has posted it on X, here, and read it aloud on TV here.
I struggle to find the words to start this. I’ve gone over in my head what I could say and how to explain something like this….
There’s a kind of loneliness that goes beyond being alone in a room. It’s the kind where you’re surrounded by people but you’re stuck in a bubble. It’s where the world around you is moving but you can’t follow it. It’s where no one else can sit in your body and feel what it’s like to be you. It’s difficult to articulate the depth of the darkness this process . . . Not just what happened- but the silence afterwards…
…looking in the mirror and not recognise the person staring back. Feeling like your body isn’t yours anymore like it belongs to the memory of what happened instead. Not even wanting to be associated with yourself because you feel so violated and disgusted to be you…
I was forced in a moment that didn’t end for me when he was finished. It followed me. When he was done he got to walk away but I was left to deal with the battle. I have been left to carry a trauma that invades every part of my life. While he was able to leave and return to his life without consequence, mine feels like it’s fallen apart. When I arrived back at school, I carried that silence with me where everything kept moving but I was stuck. My teachers still handed out assignments. Homework still had deadlines and life kept going on. I still tried to carry on. . . I convinced myself that if I stayed quiet, if I stayed very brief, if I carried it alone it would go away. However, one thing I’ve really learnt is it doesn’t work like that.
What hurts most now is what my family went through. I didn’t just try to leave my pain behind but I nearly left them to pick up the pieces of it. That guilt is difficult to shake. The people who love me were hugely impacted by what he decided to do but also by my reaction to it. That is something I regret deeply. The ones who searched for me when they didn’t know where I was, who waited in the hospital corridors with fear in their eyes, who whispered prayers I’ll never hear. The same hands that once put a plaster on my scraped knees now held mine trembling. My dad – the man who used to lift me onto his shoulders so I could see the world from above now sat in a chair, staring at the floor, unable to fix what was broken inside. My mum – who once brushed the tangles from my curly hair and kissed my forehead before bed, now sat silently praying that her child wouldn’t disappear for good.
I had let them down.
…because I was ashamed of what had happened so instead of reaching out to them, I pulled away. I self destructed in the only way I thought how, it wasn’t intentional,I just gave up caring. I sabotaged everything. My grades were non-existent because I wouldn’t turn up, I avoided my friends, I isolated myself. I felt like every time I tried to pull myself out I was hit with another wave of sadness. I couldn’t see a way out. I thought that maybe I deserved it. I didn’t know how to face what happened to me…
I wasn’t drinking to have fun, I was drinking to chase numbness
I became too consumed by everything I was trying so hard to bury. When you’re hurting that much you believe the people you love and care about would be better off without the broken version of you. I know it wasn’t my fault but knowing doesn’t take away the pain. Knowing doesn’t erase the shame, the humiliation, being forced to relive the worst moment of my life in front of strangers, to speak about something so deeply personal, so violating, so humiliating. It doesn’t erase the feeling of exposure.
Reflecting on the trial starting, she said:
I sat in a chair waiting, carrying the weight of everything I had been through and building up the courage it took just to be there. Just before I was about to go in it was adjourned for reasons outside my control. It was another moment where I felt out of control and another time my life was put on hold. At the time I got told I was being brave but I didn’t feel brave. I felt powerless and tired. That day became yet another reminder that this person still has influence over my life.
I refuse to let the person who did this to me keep that power. I’m doing it for freedom. So I can heal from this one day because more than anything I want to carry peace in a place that has been filled with such darkness for so long.
