It’s a Lie! — Nigerian Man Tells UK Court After Teen Accused Him of Rape in the forest
A 24-year-old Nigerian man has denied allegations that he raped a 19-year-old woman who claimed he drugged her from a main road into nearby woods and sexually assaulted her in the United Kingdom.
Gift Oladele, who has no fixed address but was described as running a cleaning business in Manchester, is facing two counts of rape and one count of sexual assault. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
Prosecutor James Coutts told Mold Crown Court that the teenager said she was left terrified during the alleged incident after a night out in Wrexham. According to the prosecution, Oladele allegedly covered her mouth with his hand and pushed her down a path leading into the woods where she claimed the assault took place.
“I’m frozen. I felt like I couldn’t move because I knew what was coming,” the woman told the court.
The jury heard that she alleged she was struck several times and that her jeans were ripped off during the ordeal.
Prosecutors said the teenager later made it home, woke her parents and reported the incident to police.
However, Oladele firmly denied the accusations when he took the stand on Friday, March 13.
“I didn’t rape this girl,” he told the court. “It’s a lie.”
Coutts told jurors that the woman had been crying, shaking and hysterical after the alleged attack. But Oladele insisted he had done nothing that could have left her in such a distressed state.
The defendant admitted he walked with the woman in the early hours of the morning while she was heading home last September. However, he maintained that her account of what happened afterward was untrue.
Oladele also acknowledged that he left her in an alley after what he described as consensual sex, admitting that doing so “wasn’t a gentlemanly thing” to do.