Christopher May has successfully prosecuted David Spiridon, a teenager from Chatham, Kent, who was recently convicted following his trial at Maidstone Crown Court of two offences of Rape of a 15-year-old girl in a shopping centre multi-storey car park. He was sentenced to nine years custody.
A detective constable has praised a rape victim for her bravery to "stand against this vile bully" after her attacker was jailed for nine years.
Spiridon could not previously be identified because of his age but Judge Adele Williams lifted the order when he appeared for sentence.
Spiridon was said to be part of the C4 gang in Kent. His 15-year-old victim told a schoolteacher that she had been at the Pentagon shopping centre in Chatham with a friend in March when approached by Spiridon, who was then aged 16, wearing a covering on his head.
Spiridon told her to go with him. He took her away from her friends to a stairwell in the multi-storey car park. She did not resist as she was terrified as he had shown her a knife under his jacket. He then asked her if she was sexually active and whether she had “given uck”, a slang term for a sex act, and whether she was going to do it for him. He ignored her protestations.
Spiridon then forced her to perform the act.
The next day the girl was at the shopping centre again with friends, when they saw the teenager and other boys. He again asked her to go to the stairwell. She tried to gesture to the others to go with her, but they did not do so.
“She was worried about the repercussions if she refused what he wanted,” said Mr May. “Afterwards, she was very scared and ran off to find her friends.”
She saw him again on another occasion at the centre and he showed her videos on his phone of other girls performing the sex act on him.
The victim said in a recorded interview that she believed that he was in a gang. She said of the first time he told her to perform the sex act: “At that point I was scared, because he’s like gang and stuff, and he’s got like knives and stuff”.
“I would love to have retaliated, hit him back or something, but I didn’t want to get hit or stabbed or anything.” He later contacted her on Instagram. She saw a photo of him wearing as a face covering a “bally” (a balaclava), similar to the one he wore in the shopping centre.
Judge Adele Williams sentenced Spiridon to 9 years in prison. His name will appear on the sex offenders' register indefinitely and a sexual harm prevention order was also made for 10 years. Spiridon was 16 years old at the time of the offence and had previous convictions for robbery in 2016.
Chris May is a heavyweight criminal barrister instructed in some of the most serious, and often high profile criminal cases either as the leading junior or sole advocate. He is the head of the Criminal Team at 5SAH and he is the Senior of the Kent Bar Mess.
