Court hears how British cop spiked student's drink, violently raped her

File picture: Pixabay

File picture: Pixabay

Published May 24, 2019

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London - A British police officer is facing life in jail after spiking a student’s drink and "violently" raping her on the Caribbean island of Antigua.

Lee Martin-Cramp met the American on dating app Tinder and went back to her apartment where he put something in her wine that made her pass out.

The student, a devout Christian who was a virgin, remembered screaming ‘no’ but her memory was so blank she had to ask Martin-Cramp if they had sex.

Martin-Cramp, 26, told her to ‘pretend it never happened’ and brazenly asked her for sex again – before leaving Antigua and blocking her on the online messaging site WhatsApp.

In a legal first, Martin-Cramp was extradited to Antigua, where a High Court jury took just three hours to convict him. The trial heard that Martin-Cramp met the student in May 2015 while on holiday to attend a family wedding.

The two switched to messaging service WhatsApp where she told him before their date: "Don’t come with an expectation of having sex. I don’t do that kind of thing with people I just met."

Martin-Cramp told her: "Don’t worry, I’m not a creep." After drinking at a bar, they went back to her apartment where they opened a bottle of wine and chatted on her balcony.

They decided to watch a film and the student went inside to change, leaving her glass of wine with Martin-Cramp. By the time she came back, he had brought it inside and closed the blinds. The student said: "As I was about to start Netflix, I took a sip of my drink and it tasted different. I told him, 'this tastes different'.

"He told me he had taken vodka from my freezer and poured some of it into the wine and it was something they did in the UK.

"I said OK and took another two sips. I just didn’t want any more because it tasted different. After about ten minutes I was starting to feel off, to feel dizzy, not myself."

The student sobbed as she said: "After that all I have is flashes from the rest of the night. I remember him being over me. I remember saying no, stop, being in pain. I remember my head hitting the floor."

At 7am the next day, she woke up and she and Martin-Cramp were naked in her bed. She was bleeding, had two bruises on each side of her neck and could barely walk. Asked how rated the pain she was experiencing out of ten, the student said: "I wouldn’t fit on that scale."

She said she stayed friendly with Martin-Crimp and kept messaging him in the hope she could secretly record him admitting what he did, but they never saw each other again. In messages on WhatsApp, the student asked Martin-Cramp if he remembered if they had sex because her memory was blank.

He initially claimed he was "98 per cent sure" they did not, but then said they "definitely" did. The student wrote: "I wish I knew because if all this is true you took my V card (virginity)." Martin-Cramp wrote: "I can’t give it back haha."

The student said: "I just can’t believe this." Martin-Cramp told her: "Just pretend it never happened."

The court heard that Martin-Cramp messaged her pictures of himself in uniform which ‘built up a sense of trust’ between them. She said: "If it was anybody I was going to trust it’s going to be someone with that power and authority."

Martin-Cramp, who joined the Metropolitan Police in 2014 and was posted to Wimbledon, south-east London, denied one count of rape. He will be sentenced at a later date.

His extradition, which was approved by Home Secretary Sajid Javid, was the first time a UK citizen has been extradited to Antigua to face criminal charges. It is not clear where he will serve his sentence, but his lawyers are expected to request that he do so in the UK.

Daily Mail

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