A trainee solicitor at a top law firm who repeatedly raped a young woman he had abducted from the street as she celebrated her university graduation has been jailed for 14 years.
Wilfred Marodza, 28, stalked the woman through the streets of Borough as she walked home from the pub and dragged her into a park where he carried out the attack.
He forced the victim to strip naked before he raped her three times, threatening to kill the terrified woman if she screamed and chillingly telling her: “I’m going to have to bury you now”.
The woman managed to break free, fleeing through the streets with Marodza in pursuit, and eventually sought refuge in a passing taxi.
Marodza, a trainee solicitor with firm Cripps Pemberton Greenish, struck again around an hour later, befriending a partially sighted woman who he also tried to drag off the streets.
However when she screamed the sexual predator turned and ran away.
The qualified lawyer was snared as he had left his rucksack, containing his work ID card and legal papers from cases he was working on, at the scene of the first attack, Inner London crown court heard.
Sentencing him this afternoon, Judge Nigel Seed QC told Marodza: “There was severe psychological harm, abduction, it was a sustained incident and there were threats of violence.
“I accept it was completely out of character.
“Your family members and others speak very highly of you – you had a hitherto unblemished character but that has all gone now.”
The court heard Marodza was out celebrating his birthday with friends at the N1 bar in London Bridge on July 19 last year, but he was ejected for being drunk and harassing women in the venue.
“He was described by door staff as having an attitude, harassing and aggravating people”, said prosecutor Edward Lucas, who said Mardoza was spotted grabbing the bottom of a woman who refused to give him her phone number.
“Security staff described him as arguing, boasting to them about how much he had earned in the last week.”
CCTV caught Marodza then walking through the streets before starting to follow the first victim, who had just graduated with a first-class degree and was about to start her career in London.
“(Marodza) grabbed her from behind and put his hand over her mouth”, said Mr Lucas. “He told her ‘shut the f*** up, if you scream I’m going to kill you’.”
Mardoza dragged the woman, who can be seen on CCTV struggling to get free, into Dickens Field in Borough where he carried out the attack.
“She believed she was going to be killed”, said the prosecutor. “He told her ‘I’m going to have to bury you now’.
“The defendant was arguing with himself, stating that he didn’t want to do all this. He was somehow angry with himself.
“She ran away, totally naked, screaming ‘help me’.”
The court heard Marodza chased the woman through the street, and told a concerned passerby it was a “domestic” and the woman was his girlfriend.
The victim was helped by a taxi driver who gave her some clothes and took her to a police station, but the woman was so confused and traumatised she ran into a nearby McDonalds believing it was the police station.
Marodza struck again at around 3.45am, befriending the second victim at a bus stop before grabbing her from behind and telling her: “You will lose more than your bag if you don’t obey me”.
The woman screamed for help and the rapist fled, and he was swiftly caught by police thanks to the bag he had left behind at the scene of the first attack.
The court heard Mardoza graduated from Kent University with a law degree in 2012 but he struggled for five years to find employment, working in a bar to make ends meet.
He told a psychologist he had an unhappy childhood separated from his mother from the ages of 4 to 11, and he had pursued a career in law that he disliked in order to please her.
He had been “self-medicating” with heavy alcohol use, the court heard, and was angered by the fact his friends had not followed him when he was kicked out of the bar.
In a letter to the court, Marodza apologised and accepted he had caused “unimaginable horror, pain and sorrow to the victims, their families and friends”.
He said he is “bitterly sorry” for the attacks and added: “My actions were evil”.
Marodza, a Zimbabwean national from Eastbourne in East Sussex, pleaded guilty to four counts of rape, kidnapping and a charge of committing an offence with intent to commit a sexual offence.
He will now be on the sex offenders register for life.
