A woman who claims she was sexually assaulted while walking through town has told a Royal Court trial that her alleged attacked would not take “no” for an answer.
Abdelkarim Arfaoui (27) walked alongside one woman, a jury was told yesterday, and told her he wanted to “f**k her”. When she refused, he allegedly followed her, forcibly kissed her, ran after her, strangled her, tackled her and attempted to rape her.
Setting out the case yesterday, Crown Advocate Lauren Hallam, prosecuting, said Mr Arfaoui then went on to attack four more random women, who were on their way to work and to the gym.
The first of the five complainants appeared in the Royal Court this morning, after jurors were shown a video interview of her account.
Advocate Greg Herold-Howes, defending, said: “You described [in your interview] him ‘begging’.”
She said she told him she did not want to have sex with him and wanted to go home. She added: “He just couldn’t understand. When I said ‘begging’, he couldn’t understand why I was saying no. He was saying, ‘but why? But why?’.
“That’s what I mean by begging.”
The man allegedly pinned the woman against a fence and kissed her.
She said: “I wish someone intervened. No one did.”
Advocate Herold-Howes suggested that CCTV showed her pulling Mr Arfaoui in, but she said she was pushing him away.
“He’s got me against the fence, that’s not me consenting to that. I’m not holding him – I’m pushing him away,” she said.
She described how he tried three times to strangle her with his arm until she could not breathe, could feel her eyes “bulging”, and her legs were giving way.
“When I tried to run away, he pulled me back. I was trying to scream but I couldn’t.”
She described in her police interview how he then tackled her to the ground and attempted to rape her, but she escaped.
The jury trial, now in its second day, continues. Commissioner Alan Binnington is presiding.
