Danut Bulboana, a 21-year-old rapist, has been jailed for 12 years after he was found guilty of raping an intoxicated woman who was drunk and lost on her way home.
The woman was dropped off by a minicab in Catford by accident because the driver had the wrong address.
Bulboana saw the woman in the area and took advantage of her impaired state. The predator led her to a secluded woodland where he raped her twice, and shoved a piece of material in her mouth to keep her quiet. She believed that he was trying to suffocate her.
The encounter took a bizarre turn after Bulboana led the woman to Catford Bridge railway station, and then moments later came back and pretended to meet her for the first time, claiming to be a good Samaritan who wanted to find her help.
Judge Jonathan Mann QC told Bulboana in court that he was a danger to society.
“Your lack of insight into the terrible way you behaved shows to me you refuse to accept the terrible things you did. You are without doubt, and remain, a danger. The victim was extremely vulnerable, she was plainly intoxicated, the incident was sustained – you raped her once and raped her again – and to perpetuate the attack you prevented her from screaming by sticking material down her throat,” Mann said, according to the Evening Standard.
A man has been jailed for 12 years after he raped a lone woman in Lewisham.
Danut Bulboana, 21 (01.07.99), of no fixed address was sentenced on Tuesday, 17 November at Woolwich Crown Court to a total of 12 years’ imprisonment.https://t.co/UC9PArbg7k
— London & UK Crime (@CrimeLdn) November 18, 2020
Bulboana denied the attacks, but he was identified by the victim and he was also caught on CCTV footage leading the woman over a railway bridge to the train station. In the footage, he can also be seen taking money from the woman’s purse. The attack happened on August 27 of last year, and at the time, Bulboana, a Romanian national, was living rough in the area.
“You decided you could take advantage of her. You took her to a dark and quiet place in the woods – it was your intention to rape her. You pretended to befriend her, stole money from her purse to buy her water, perhaps because you realized by that time she was on the phone to the police,” Judge Mann said in court.
After the attack, Bulboana attempted to change his clothes to disguise his appearance, but the victim drove around with the police until they were able to find him. The victim told the court that her life has been ruined by the incident, and she has been left traumatized.
“My confidence is now gone. I have gone from being someone who answers questions directly to someone who finds even the most menial tasks take time,” the victim told the court.
Bulboana will serve at least eight years of his prison sentence.
In the year to the end of March 2017, the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) estimated that 20% of women and 4% of men have experienced some type of sexual assault since the age of 16, which is equivalent to 3.4 million female and 631,000 male victims. 3.1% of women (510,000) and 0.8% of men (138,000) aged 16 to 59 had experienced a sexual assault in the last year.
