A man has been jailed for more than three years after raping a woman and then threatening to kill her dad.
Vannak Rowe, 22, forced himself on the victim after she repeatedly refused to have sex with him at her home.
The young woman was too scared to report him at first, and a court heard he then sent her a text days later threatening to kill her dad.
When she finally found the courage to tell police, text messages were uncovered in which Rowe, of Hinckley in Leicestershire, confessed to the rape.
When he was arrested he initially admitted the crime – but then changed his plea to not guilty, before changing it to guilty again.
Jailing him for three years and two months last Friday, Judge Andrew Lockhart called him ‘brave’ for his initial confession.
‘You are 22 years of age, of good character, but you have committed the serious offence of rape for which I must now sentence you,’ the judge said.
‘You sought to persuade her to have sex with you, and she said no from the outset. You knew when you penetrated her that she was not consenting.
‘Arrested, you had plainly come to the view that you had raped her, and you were right about that.
‘You were brave in that interview, and you made appropriate admissions. But your bravery deserted you.
‘Since that time you have not behaved well at all, seeking to say you did not understand the interview when, on any basis, you understood everything.’
Prosecutor Matthew Barnes told Warwick Crown Court how the woman had agreed to let Rowe stay at her home in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, in January 2020.
The court heard the victim woke up with Rowe groping her and begging her for sex, despite turning down his requests multiple times.
‘She made it perfectly clear she did not wish to,’ Mr Barnes said.
‘When she said no, he said he wanted to and asked her to allow him to, and said he needed her to give in.
‘She turned away from him, and he forced himself inside her from behind. She did not consent at any time. She was crying and telling him to stop.’
After Rowe’s arrest, he was interviewed without an interpreter and he admitted in English that he had raped her.
He told officers: ‘I pulled my trousers down to my knee. I pulled her shorts to the side and had sex.’
Rowe, who admitted his victim said ‘no’, was asked: ‘What else was she saying to you other than “no”? Was she saying anything else?’
He replied: ‘No.’
Defence lawyer James Bide-Thomas said Rowe, who has lived in the UK since moving from Cambodia at the age of 12, was sorry for his crime.
‘The greatest sadness is that, having made full admissions in interview, he has chosen to take the matter as far as this,’ he said.
‘An early guilty plea would have made a significant difference.
‘He is someone who is controlled to a large extent by his parents who chose in this case to believe something which was not true – that their son would not behave in this way.
‘Mr Rowe knows he is going to prison today. He has asked me to apologise for the offence he’s committed.’
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