(New Straits Times) - Four wealthy Russians cheered a gang rape like “professional footballers celebrating the scoring of a goal”, a judge said today as he jailed them for a total of 36 years.
(Clockwise, from top left) Oleg Ivanov, 23, Norayr Davtyan, 22, Armen Simonyan, 19, and Gregory Melnikov, 23, denied raping the teenager but were unanimously convicted yesterday after an eight-week trial.
Oleg Ivanov and Gregory Andreev Melnikov, both 23, Norayr Davtyan, 22, and Armen Simonyan, 19, filmed the sickening attack on an 18-year old Malaysian fellow student at their £30,000 (RM147,000)-a-year boarding school using an iPhone.
Jurors unanimously convicted the “minigarchs” of rape after viewing the video.
Ringleader Davtyan was jailed for 10 years, Melnikov for nine years and Ivanov and Simonyan for eight years apiece at Woolwich Crown Court yesterday.
In the course of the “disgusting” attack they egged each other on by saying: “You’re not going to marry her.”
They later showed the iPhone footage of their victim’s ordeal to friends at their exclusive college in south London.
Judge Peter Murphy said: “The iPhone footage shows what can only be described as a callous disregard for the victim as a human being and indeed as anything other than an object of their own pleasure.
“Although there was no pre-existing plan, once the sequence of events started, they were encouraging each other to do more and more and were clearly seen on the iPhone celebrating their triumph almost in the manner of professional footballers celebrating the scoring of a goal.
“They also boasted that they would show the footage to anyone in Moscow.
“(The victim) in my judgment certainly is heard to utter the word ‘no’ on a number of occasions. Whatever the case of her condition, it is clear as I think it must have been to the defendants that she was in no position to decide whether to consent or not to consent, or to resist what was going on. No one who has seen that footage can leave this trial without feeling complete disgust towards it.”
On the night of Jan 21, the college put on a disco for its students, while Davtyan also held an impromptu party in his room.
The group of Russians filmed the whole attack on a mobile phone
The victim went to the room between 7pm and 8pm and downed a shot of whisky before going back to the main building.
She thought her drink had been spiked and felt dizzy.
Closed-circuit television cameras captured her stumbling though the main entrance before later filming her in an outdoor smoking area talking to Ivanov and Melnikov.
She was later seen walking away from the smoking area with Melnikov when she was taken to the party in Davtyan’s room.
Once there, she was seen to vomit and lie down on the floor, and as the party wound down she was eventually left alone with the four men.
Video footage recovered from Davtyan’s iPhone taken between 12.38am and 3.10am then showed all four men raping the girl.
“At one point, Ivanov said he felt pity for her, but this was only after he and the others had sex with her,” prosecutor Peter Clement said.
The footage also showed that the rapists took regular cigarette breaks.
Ivanov, Melnikov, Davtyan, Simonyan, all of Deptford, southeast London, all denied two counts of rape.
In their evidence, they claimed that the sex had been consensual.
The jury of seven men and four women unanimously convicted Davtyan of two counts of rape.
They convicted Melnikov of one count of rape. Ivanov and Simonyan were both convicted of one rape count.
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