Luiz da Silva Neto found guilty at Oxford Crown Court of drugging and sexually assaulting first victim

The 12-strong panel have spent more than 14-and-a-half hours considering their verdicts following the two-and-a-half week trial at Oxford Crown Court.

Da Silva Neto, stood in the dock wearing a grey blazer and light blue shirt, kept his eyes down and his hands clasped in front of him as the forewoman of the jury announced they had found him guilty of administering an ‘unknown substance’ to the first of his two victims with intent to stupefy and non-consensual sexual activity by a majority of 10 jurors to two.

Judge Michael Gledhill QC remanded the defendant in custody. He will be sentenced next Thursday.

And he thanked the jury, who have sat on the case for three weeks, for their close attention to the trial.

The first victim told jurors that he had travelled down to 36-year-old da Silva Neto’s cottage in Middle Barton on November 10 in order to carry out some DIY work on the holiday rental.

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After helping the defendant sand down floors, he said he had been given Jägermeister to drink. He began feeling sleepy, lay down and fell unconscious. He said he had woken up to find da Silva Neto performing a sex act on him then ‘sliding down’ his body when the defendant realised his victim was awake.

Despite being put through the ordeal, he stayed at the cottage and continued the DIY work with his attacker. He claimed to have seen a syringe in the kitchen, leading him to form the view he had been drugged.

Asked by prosecutor Matthew Walsh why he had ‘acted as if everything was fine’, the man said: “In a way, I was scared.”  

Da Silva Neto’s trial heard that the victim approached the defendant’s partner in the days after the assault, when there was a suggestion of money changing hands. Lawyers for da Silva Neto likened it to a blackmail attempt.

On the defendant’s account, the sexual activity had been entirely consensual. They travelled to Oxfordshire together from London, carried out some sanding work on their arrival at Oxfordshire in the early hours before sharing a few Corona beers. After watching heterosexual pornography on the television, da Silva Neto claimed the other man was visibly aroused – and the defendant offered to ‘help him out’. He claimed to have performed an oral sex act on the man.

The jury has already convicted the defendant of the drugging, rape of and sexual activity with a second victim, a married company director, on December 10, 2021. He was cleared of kidnapping him from Chelsea’s Kings Road, where the victim had been drinking with colleagues, and committing the kidnap with intent to commit another offence.

Luiz da Silva Neto, of Wandsworth, will return to the crown court on Thursday, for sentence. He will be sentenced for rape, administering a substance with intent to stupefy or overpower, causing or inciting another to engage in sexual activity without consent and possession of a ‘party bag’ of illegal drugs that were found when he was stopped by the police in Manzil Way, east Oxford, last October.

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This story was written by Tom Seaward. He joined the team in 2021 as Oxfordshire's court and crime reporter.  

To get in touch with him email: Tom.Seaward@newsquest.co.uk

Follow him on Twitter: @t_seaward