A migrant who raped a 15-year-old girl in a drunken attack – leaving her pregnant – was jailed today for ten years and ten months.
Anicet Mayela, 41, had been granted asylum in the UK after repeated attempts to deport him reportedly failed.
A court today heard he forced the girl to remove her clothes before launching the assault.
Judge Maria Lamb was told an investigation began when a ‘pregnancy termination note’ was discovered, and the victim eventually revealed what had happened to her.
Prosecutor Edward Lucas said that Mayela initially ‘made admissions’ as to what he had done and went on to plead guilty to the offence. But the barrister said ‘matters took a different course thereafter when the defendant started to deny that he was guilty’.
The court heard an application to vacate his guilty plea was rejected by a judge in September, and Mayela ‘continues to deny his guilt’.
Mr Lucas said aggravating features of the case included the victim’s age and the fact that she became pregnant as a result of the attack.
In a brief extract from a victim impact statement read out by the prosecutor, the girl said: ‘I know you’re getting sentenced today…I’m so ready for it.’
Oxford Crown Court heard a report into the Congolese national – who had no previous convictions – judged that he posed a risk of serious harm to pubescent girls. Mr Lucas told Judge Lamb: ‘I submit the defendant is dangerous, for sentencing purposes’.
Peter Du Feu, defending, said Mayela had ‘spiralled into alcohol abuse and depression’ following the death of his wife from cancer. He described the December 2023 rape as a ‘one-off’.
Sentencing Mayela for what she said was a ‘terrible offence committed in guilt’, Judge Lamb told him: ‘It was her (the victim’s) first sexual experience and the misery you caused that child, who became pregnant as a result, must have been extreme.
‘You continued to deny your offence. Your sentence will be no longer for that, but you don’t have the benefit of remorse, and she doesn’t have the support and assistance of knowing that you acknowledge your guilt.’
Judge Lamb, commenting on the victim impact statement, added: ‘She is a remarkable young woman who, despite everything that has happened to her and everything that you did to her, has found it possible to forgive you.’
She said the mitigation in the case was ‘limited’, adding: ‘You continue to deny your offence. Your sentence will be no longer for that, but you do not have the benefit of remorse.’
The judge told him the victim ‘does not have the succour of knowing that you acknowledge your guilt’.
Mayela, who is thought to be a former economics student and former company secretary, sobbed in the dock as the sentence was handed down.
He admitted to a single count of rape in April and will serve two-thirds of his sentence before being released on licence.
He will be on the sex offenders’ register for life and was also ordered to comply with requirements of the Sexual Offences Act for life. Mayela, of Oxford, was joined in the dock today by a French interpreter. He will also be barred from working with children.
At the hearing in September, Judge Nigel Daly said Mayela had made an ‘unequivocal plea of guilty’ at the previous hearing which he could ‘see no reason to vacate’.
After his initial court appearance earlier this year, The Sun reported several unsuccessful attempts had previously been made to remove him from the UK before he was given permission to stay in the country.
It is understood the Home Office initially refused Mayela’s asylum claim in 2004 but he successfully challenged the decision in the courts and was eventually granted leave to remain on appeal in 2010.
According to an article published by the Institute of Race Relations (IRR), which has described itself as an ‘anti-racist think tank’, he was served three removal notices and left with a broken hand during one deportation attempt.
The IRR report, from 2005, said Mayela paid an agent to help him flee his home country in 2004 because his life was in danger. He settled in Plymouth, South Devon, where his initial asylum claim was considered and refused. An appeal was dismissed by the courts later that year.
Mayela was then held at Campsfield House Detention Centre in Kidlington, Oxfordshire. But a planned deportation flight back to the Congan capital Brazzaville in May 2005 was grounded after Air France cabin crew refused to carry him.
A month later, he won leave to remain after lawyers said that deportation would be against his human rights while police were investigating an alleged assault on him by immigration handlers.
The Sun said that two days after his release, Mayela joined a campaign to close Campsfield House and was photographed protesting outside with the sign stating: ‘Migrants are not criminals.’
At the time he told the BBC: ‘I am here to support my friends. I have been inside here, and at Colnbrook.’