A RAPIST has been jailed after targeting a university student and assaulting her in a city churchyard during the early hours. 

Khaliz Alshimery, 47, was sentenced at Oxford Crown Court on Friday (June 21) for rape, assault by penetration and three counts of sexual assault after an incident on November 19 last year.

A student, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was walking home from a night out at about 2.30am when Alshimery dragged her into St Clement’s churchyard, off Marston Road, and sexually assaulted her.

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(Image: Thames Valley Police)

Judge Nigel Daly sentenced him to 12 years imprisonment with a five year extended licence.

“Young women in this city and throughout the UK will go out for an evening…and may get slightly tipsy,” he said. “They become very vulnerable.

“But the attitude towards vulnerability should be to help those and to protect them. It should not be to exploit those who are vulnerable for any reason at all.

“This city and other cities should be able to protect young women walking home at night.”

During the trial, it was heard that the student first noticed the defendant in Oxford's High Street.

He was described as ‘trailing around Oxford looking for single woman’.

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He began ‘hassling’ her and ‘wrapping’ himself around the student before touching her breasts and kissing her.

The defendant then forced her into the churchyard and raped her against a concrete block.

Alshimery had then thanked her before allowing her to flee.

The defendant, who was staying at a Holiday Inn in Blackbird Leys at the time as an asylum seeker, denied the offences and told police the student had asked him for £50 for sex and everything that happened was consensual.

In a victim impact statement, the student said the incident has impacted her self-esteem and her university career.

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(Image: NQ)

She wrote: “My motivation in coming forward in this case is because I wouldn’t want him to do this to any other daughter and it’s easier to stand up and protect someone else, even if it’s fictional, rather than myself.”

Defending Alshimery, his barrister Peter Du Feu explained that his client still denies the offences and he plans to appeal his conviction.

He told the court that Alshimery has been attacked in prison and has not been placed in a ‘protective’ wing meaning he’s likely to be attacked again.

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“That is the future that potentially faces this defendant for the foreseeable future,” he said.

The court heard that the defendant has no previous convictions.

Judge Daly added: “You were waiting to find somebody that you could exploit. You are completely unrepentant and unremorseful.”

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