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City trader jailed for raping woman under desk after office party
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A City trader has been jailed for six years for raping a woman as she attempted to sleep under her desk after an office party.
This could be because it launched early, our rights have expired, there was a legal issue, or for another reason.
Daniel Green, 26, attacked the woman, in her 20s, after she lay down under a desk in the early hours of 16 May last year.
Green insisted the sex was consensual but an Old Bailey jury convicted him on Friday, by a majority of 11 to one, after deliberating for six hours. He gave no reaction as the verdict was delivered.
The pair met during after-work drinks in the City of London and went back with a group of Green’s colleagues to the StratX stockbrokers’ offices near Monument, where he had recently started work.
While there, partygoers danced on desks, drank champagne and took lines of cocaine into the early hours, the court heard.
Most went home but the victim, who cannot be identified, was left in the office with Green, her friend and another StratX employee.
She told jurors she became tired and decided to take a nap under a desk, intending to catch the first train home because she did not have enough money for a taxi.
Wiping away tears, she described how she awoke to find Green tugging her trousers down and asked him ‘What the fuck are you doing?’
“At that point I remember just trying to crawl forward to get away. I knew what was going to happen. I remember being pulled back,” she told the jury. “The next thing I remember was Daniel raping me. I just kept saying ‘No, no, no, no, no, no’ but it absolutely didn’t stop anything.”
The woman rang her best friend from the office and she alerted police, who arrested Green, of Walthamstow, east London. Green insisted the sex was consensual and that he stopped when she began to cry as he thought he was causing pain.
Prosecutor Timothy Forster dismissed Green’s account, saying he had treated his victim like a “piece of meat”. He told jurors: “You perhaps do not need to know the truth of what was going through Mr Green’s mind. He was a new member of the company. He was suddenly in this world where everyone was drinking and taking cocaine. To a certain extent he might feel he wants to impress people.”
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The barrister said the defendant had been jealous that the victim’s female friend was getting close to his co-worker and had acted because he was “frustrated and humiliated in front of his new work colleagues”.
Green made no reaction as Forster read out a statement from his victim in which she described the devastating effect on her life and her difficulties in moving on. The executive, who cannot be identified, said: “The incident has been extremely traumatic for me. It has been very hard to come to terms with what happened and the effect this has had on a number of aspects of my personal life as well as my professional life.
“Despite the incident being a year ago, it feels very fresh in my mind and I still remember everything and how I felt in the ordeal. I desperately want to forget about what happened, but I’m not able to and fear this is something which will continue to blight my life. That event, it has left me numb and immediately afterwards I was barely about to talk.”
The court heard Green had a number of convictions related to class A drugs. Jailing Green, Recorder Michael Wood QC told him: “I do not punish you for what seems to be [the] City culture of excessive drink and casual use of drugs when you go out socialising.”
He said Green may have been “coming down from the cocaine” he had taken when he wandered around the office, peering at the victim sleeping before raping her. He said the defendant had shown no remorse and behaved with “a degree of arrogance” when he gave evidence in court.
Wood ordered that Green be put on the sexual offenders’ register indefinitely.
