THE VICTIM of a rapist who filmed his vile assaults on a sleeping woman said the flashbacks made her want to ‘rip my head off my shoulders’.
The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, told Oxford Crown Court in a victim personal statement: “I don’t feel like me anymore. I feel damaged.”
When she discovered that unemployed Kiefer Ewers, 26, had filmed himself sexually assaulting her while she was asleep she felt ‘totally shocked not just by the disgusting content but also by the sheer volume [the police] found’.
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“I felt totally violated and degraded,” she added. The woman ‘constantly’ worried that the videos might find their way onto the internet.
She told the court that the abuse had a significant impact on her life. She had had to move home, suffered regular flashbacks and found herself having to ‘scrub my skin in the shower because I feel so dirty’.
In January, a jury heard how the woman was repeatedly sexually assaulted by the defendant. He had also physically attacked her.
Jailing him for 12 years on Friday (March 3), Recorder John Ryder KC said: “You essentially used the victim as an object for the purposes of your personal sexual gratification.
“You recorded your sexual abuse by way of a video and camera on your mobile telephone. On other occasions you secretly photographed the victim’s […] naked body whilst she showered.
"The gross insensitivity of what you did is intensified by the fact that you knew full well [that] that she had been similarly sexually abused whilst she slept when a child.”
He noted that Ewers told the probation officer writing a pre-sentence report that he thought he had been ‘helping’ his victim.
“How on earth you thought behaving in this fashion could possibly help her is beyond my understanding,” the judge said.
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Ewers, of Shipton Road, Woodstock, was convicted in January of rape, sexual assault by penetration, causing actual bodily harm and voyeurism. He was cleared of other charges of sexual assault and voyeurism.
Recorder Ryder said: “You deprive yourself of potentially the most powerful mitigation in this case by failing to accept responsibility for what you clearly had done.”
Mitigating on Friday, James Hay said his client, now a bar manager, had shown ‘insight’ into the impact of his behaviour on the victim since the trial.
He quoted Ewers’ words to the probation officer that he ‘can see it was wrong’ and he now felt ‘sorry’ for his victim.
“I’ve got my life together now; a partner, a home, a job,” he said. Ewers recognised that at the time of the offending he had struggled with jealousy, drug addiction and depression.
In a series of character references, Ewers’ partner of three years described him as her ‘everything’, while his mother said her son had ‘totally turned his life around’. His father told the judge: “He’s not just my son he’s my best friend. I don’t know what I’m going to do without him.”
There had been a three year delay since his arrest, the court heard.
The judge imposed a sexual harm prevention order and a restraining order. Ewers will be on the sex offender register for life.
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