A young woman woke to find a man on top of her as she lay face down in her bed. She told a court how she managed to turn over and he left the room in his boxers and T-shirt, before returning moments later.
The woman, who had spent the evening with him drinking in Bedford town centre, said: “He came back in and said are you alright and I said why did you do that?”
She said she ordered him to leave her home in Bedford and, after he had gone, she knocked on her parents’ bedroom door to tell them what had happened.
On Thursday, December 16, 2021, 25 year old James Stark from Green End, Renhold, Bedford was found not guilty by a jury of raping the woman, but found guilty instead of an alternative charge of assault by penetration.
Stark sobbed in the dock at Luton Crown Court after the jury had delivered the verdicts. Trial Judge Gary Lucie adjourned the sentencing until the January 28 for the preparation of reports and granted him bail until then.
He ordered that he be subject to an electronically monitored home curfew until his sentencing, when he will have to be at home between the hours of 7pm and 7am.
But before he left the court the judge told Stark “By granting you bail I am not giving you any indication of how you will be dealt with.”
The judge said the likelihood was that that he would receive a sentence of “immediate custody.”
Judge Lucie said when the case comes back to court he will also want to know why it took so long to come to the court.
The matters which the jury had to reach verdicts on took place in August 2017. Stark was on trial pleading not guilty to rape and an alternative charge of assault by penetration.
Opening the case to the jury, prosecutor Marion Smullen said they would have to decide what happened between Stark and the woman in the early hours of August 10, 2017.
She told the how the evening before, the young woman who was 21 at the time was out in Bedford catching up with friends and drinking in the bar, Esquires.
At the end of the night the court was told the woman and Stark caught a a taxi back to her parents home.
The court was told that in the early hours the pair were alone in the lounge of her home. On arrival back, she had changed into shorts and T-shirt and had supplied a duvet they could sit under as they watched TV and chatted and drank some alcohol.
Miss Smullen said eventually the woman decided to go upstairs to bed leaving the defendant downstairs on the sofa.
The jury was told she got into bed wearing her shorts, knickers and her T-shirt. As was her habit, said the prosecutor, she put on headphones to listen to music as she dozed off.
Giving evidence to the court, the woman said: “The next thing I know, I woke up and he (Stark) is on top of me in my bed. He was on top of me, inside me.” She said at the same time she could hear him breathing close to her ear.
The woman said she was able to turn over still feeling “sleepy and disorientated,” and the defendant then got off the bed and briefly left the room.
She said she noticed her knickers had been removed and were beside her on the bed.
Continuing her evidence, she went on: “He came in and he was like ‘Are you alright?’ I didn’t say anything and started crying, like weeping and I said ‘Why did you do that?’
“I was just in shock.”
She said the defendant was dressed in his boxers and T-shirt and she went on: “I kept saying just go, get the f… out.”
The woman said he left and she then went into her parents’ bedroom to tell her mother what had happened.
The court heard that Stark had left behind his trousers, his hat, his mobile phone and passport at the victim’s house.
He was arrested later that morning back at his home.
Miss Smullen said that in a police interview the defendant answered no comment to questions put to him, but later in his defence case statement, he said there had been digital penetration with a finger of her vagina and it had happened with her consent.
The prosecutor told the jury it was because of what he was claiming, that there was the alternative charge to the rape allegation, of assault by penetration.
In the witness box Mr Stark told the court back at the woman’s home they had been drinking while watching TV.
“She mentioned to me that she wanted to go upstairs. She indicated through her body language and the way she looked at me that I too should follow her.
She went upstairs and I followed her upstairs.” He said in her bedroom they ”embraced” and he said she removed his hat.
Next, he said he took off his trousers and he removed her shorts as they got onto the bed where he said he took her knickers off.
His barrister Richard Reynolds asked him: “Did you have any doubts in your mind about what she wanted you to do?” He replied: “No.”
The barrister asked him: “What did you think you were going to do?” Mr Stark replied: “Get intimate, sex or heavy petting, kissing.”
He said he lay next to her on the bed in a “spoon position” and put his hand between her legs and intimately touched her.
But, he told the jury, he began to have doubts “about what I was doing” and he said he stopped and left the room to go to the bathroom.
He said when he returned “she looked annoyed at me” and he said she told him to leave, eventually telling him to “Get the fuck out.”
He went on: “I panicked because I didn’t understand what was going on.”
Asked why he didn’t take with him his clothes and possessions he answered: “It was pure panic. When she said get the f… out, I didn’t understand.”
