Predator who raped teenager in London car park jailed for 11 years

A 24-year-old man who raped a schoolgirl in a South London car park has been sentenced to more than 11 years in jail.

Saqeef Riaz, grabbed the teenager and dragged her to a Lidl supermarket car park where he raped her in August last year. But during the assault, she managed to send messages to her friends asking for ‘help’.

He was arrested in February this year after he was caught on CCTV assaulting another woman at a bus stop. Neither of the women was known to the offender previously.

Prosecutor Tara McCarthy who showed stills from CCTV to the jury at Kingston Crown Court said the schoolgirl and the predator had never met before.

“You can see Mr Riaz catches up with her. She lets him go past, she doesn’t know who it is... Mr Riaz walks past slightly and then lingers,” she said.

Then Riaz approached the teenager and told her he was 18 and asked for directions.

McCarthy told the jury: “He suddenly stopped and started kissing her. Now she froze, she wasn’t quite sure what to do. At 1:10 am, she sent a text message to one of her friends saying ‘Help’”.

The predator then grabbed the girl’s arm and took her into the supermarket car park and led her to a spot away from the view of the CCTV camera. In a period of five minutes, he raped the teenager who repeatedly told him to stop and that she was “panicking”, the court heard.

When this was ongoing, she managed to send another text to her friend saying “Help”. But when she tried to call the emergency services, Riaz forced her to turn her phone off.

The teenager said in a statement that the incident damaged her confidence and affected her mental health.

According to a MyLondon report, Judge Georgina Kent said she was satisfied that Riaz had targeted the schoolgirl because she was “particularly vulnerable”.

Riaz has been jailed for 11 years and six months. He is also placed on the sex offenders register indefinitely and a sexual harm prevention order has been imposed on him for 15 years, MyLondon said.