Man sentenced to two years in prison for rape in Espoo, Finland
A court in Western Uusimaa sentenced a man to two years in prison on Friday for raping a woman at his home in the autumn of 2020. The incident took place during a weekend night in September. The victim, who was heavily intoxicated, got into a taxi at a taxi stand in Helsinki’s Katajanokka shortly after 5 a.m. The taxi took her to an unknown apartment in Espoo.
Upon awakening in the strange apartment, the woman found herself lying on a sofa with her pants down, feeling pain in her genital area. She noticed a man sleeping beside her on the bed, who was later identified as the apartment’s occupant. In a state of panic, she asked the man what had happened, but he reportedly laughed and mocked her.
During the night, her phone died, and she agreed to let the man drive her home since he refused to provide his address. The woman later exchanged numbers with him in an attempt to clarify the situation. When she messaged him asking how she ended up in his apartment, he initially claimed to have no memory of the events, then suggested that a friend of his, a taxi driver, had brought her there due to her inability to provide her own address.
When the woman requested the taxi driver’s contact information, the man did not respond and eventually blocked her messages. DNA belonging to the man was found on the woman during investigations. In court, he denied the rape allegations, asserting that any contact had been consensual. The court, however, found no reasonable doubt regarding his guilt and sentenced 34-year-old Ismail Mohamed Jele to two years of imprisonment for the crime.