Rapist filmed sick abuse of victim at Oxfordshire hotel

Paul Harris, 36, tied a belt around his victim’s neck and ordered her to crawl across the floor ‘like a dog’. He filmed her sobbing in fear as she was forced to perform sex acts on herself using a vibrator and the neck of a glass bottle.

In a victim personal statement read to Oxford Crown Court by prosecutor Sally Hobson, the woman said she felt like she’d been living in a ‘horror movie’.

“Never in my life will I trust a single soul again,” she said. “I just feel absolutely numb.”

Jailing him for eight years and nine months, Judge Ian Pringle QC said of the vile film made by Harris: “She sobbed, she cried and you were bullying throughout the entire episode with her.

“She pleaded with you not to make her do these things and you insisted under threats to her that she did.

“It was utterly degrading and truly appalling behaviour by you.”

Middle Aston House Picture: GOOGLE

Opening the case on Thursday morning, Ms Hobson said on April 10, 2019, he became enraged after learning of the woman’s sexual history from screenshots on her phone and dragged her into the staff flat where he was living at Oxfordshire hotel Middle Aston House.

Harris held his hand over the woman’s nose and mouth, ripped off her top then began to pinch her skin.

She clawed at his neck then, in an effort to appease him, said she’d been raped by two former boyfriends – as he suggested she had been. “It was the only way she thought she could stop him from hurting her anymore,” Ms Hobson said.

The following day, April 11, Harris called in sick due to the scratch marks on his neck – saying he would return to work the following Monday.

He held the woman captive, forced her to strip naked, wear a belt round her neck and crawl on the floor like a dog. He got her to perform sex acts on herself. The ordeal was filmed by Harris.

Ms Hobson said the videos made for ‘harrowing viewing’. “It is clear she was in a considerable amount of distress and was performing through fear.”

Harris made his victim call the police to report the fictitious rapes by former partners.

On April 13, Harris and his victim travelled together on the bus to Banbury to pick up her brother who for a planned stay with the woman.

She told her brother about what she’d been through and arranged for him to stay in the same bedroom where she was sleeping that night with the defendant. Harris was said to have taken her to a laundry cupboard adjacent to the flat, where he raped her.

The following day, she fled across fields and over barbed wire fences to get away. She had planned to explain what had been going on to the police officers due to meet her at 12.30pm to speak about the historic rapes she’d reported the previous day. When the officers still hadn’t arrived by 12.40pm she made her escape and called 999.

Harris, of Bilston, Wolverhampton, had been due to stand trial but pleaded guilty earlier this autumn to charges of false imprisonment, rape and causing a woman to engage in sexual activity. He had no previous convictions, only an old police caution.

Paul Harris' custody shot Picture: TVP

Mitigating, Jonathan Coode said his client and his victim had engaged in unusual sexual practices previously. He had heard from the victim after she reported the matter to the police.

In a police interview, Harris said he’d been trying to get ‘pay back’ after his victim scratched him the night before. “I just turned into a devil because I’ve got a terrible temper,” he confessed.

A restraining order prevents Harris from contacting his victim for life. He will remain on the sex offender register until his death.

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