Locations
Stenson Road, Stenson Fields, Derby, Derbyshire, DE23
Description
A double rapist repaid the kindness of a stranger who invited him back to her Derby home by carrying out what a judge called “a campaign of sexual violence” on her over the next few days. Derby Crown Court heard how, on one occasion, Nathan Cole’s terrified victim was too frightened to call out in pain as her teenage grandson was asleep at the property.
At the time he was on bail for raping a previous victim just two months earlier, after she had let him stay on her sofa. In heartbreaking victim impact statements read to the court, both women told how they have attempted to take their own lives as a result of the horrific ordeals the 32-year-old subjected them to. And Cole stormed out of the video-link room at HMP Nottingham before finding out his fate. Shockingly, he still denies his brutal inhuman crimes.
Handing him a 20-year prison sentence in his absence, Recorder Simon King said: “He abused (the first victim) in possibly the most fundamental way in that he raped her and continues to deny that he did so. But the jury had no difficulty in convicting him and in my view he was very well aware of what he had done.
“(The second victim) took pity on him, believing he was homeless, invited him back to her home where she lived alone and she now regrets that extremely because what happened was he carried out a campaign of sexual violence and rape. She had invited a stranger into her own home and he abused her kindness.”
Stephen Kemp, prosecuting, said the first rape took place at the victim’s flat in Spondon in January last year. He said she had invited the defendant to stay over on the sofa but he entered her room, got into her bad and raped her.
The prosecutor said: “She describes how afterwards he was saying ‘what have I done?’ before asking her not to tell anyone. She called the police and he was arrested. When he was arrested he was heard to say ‘I am disgusting, I deserve to die’.”
In a victim impact statement she said: “I was screaming and begging for (him) to stop but (he) carried on. I don’t feel like the same person anymore, every time I shower I scrub and scrub myself because I feel dirty.”
Mr Kemp said two months later, while on bail, Cole and the second victim started talking in the smoking area outside accident and emergency at the Royal Derby Hospital and he told her he was homeless. He said she felt sorry for him and so invited him to stay overnight at her home.
The prosecutor said that night he raped her in her bed and then raped her twice more over the next two days. Mr Kemp said: “She told the defendant ‘no’ but she did not want to scream or shout as she did not want to wake her grandson and for him to find out what was happening to her. One one occasion he also bit her breasts and neck.”
In her victim impact statement, that woman, a mother and grandmother from Derby, told how she has tried to take her own life as a result of what happened to her. She said: “I was just trying to help him but this is what he did to me. I now feel like I live in a black hole. I have started drinking more to take away the memory of what happened to me. I cannot cope any more.”
Cole, of Stenson Road, denied any of the sexual activity happened and took his case to trial meaning both victims had to relive their ordeals giving evidence. A jury found him guilty of a number of counts of rape.
Roger Wilson, mitigating, said his client had never been in trouble for sexual offences before and had partly grown up in care.
Cole’s 20-year sentence is made up of 15 years custody plus a five-year extended sentence for dangerousness. It means he will not be eligible to apply for parole until two-thirds of the way through the custodial element, a period of 10 years.
Recorder King also handed the defendant a restraining order not to contact the first victim until further order and placed him on the sex offender register for life.