BBCA security guard at London’s Heaven nightclub has been found not guilty of raping a 19-year-old woman in his car during a shift at the venue.
Morenikeji Adewole, 47, of Dartford, Kent, had been charged with raping the woman near the club in the back seat of his car while she was drunk in the early hours of 1 November last year.
The complainant had queued outside the venue for around two hours with five friends for a Halloween-themed event but was denied entry for being too intoxicated, a trial at Southwark Crown Court was told.
Adewole then walked her away from the club’s entrance and picked her up in his car before driving the woman to a small road called Adelphi Terrace where they had sex.
A jury of eight men and four women reached a unanimous verdict on Friday after around six hours and 30 minutes of deliberations, with Adewole found not guilty of both rape and attempted rape.
He cried and wiped away tears in the dock as the verdicts were delivered.
Throughout the trial, Adewole admitted there was sexual activity with the complainant but said he did not have penetrative intercourse with the woman.
He said that the woman had earlier told him she was 25 but in the car she said she was 19 and he “stopped immediately”.
‘Brain driven by groin’
Addressing Adewole after the verdict, Judge Martin Griffith said he should still be “absolutely ashamed” of himself for taking advantage of the drunken woman.
The judge told him that his job should have been to take care of club-goers, but instead “your response to that was to go off in a car with her because your brain was driven by your groin”.
Adewole had used a false ID to get a job at the club, having been employed at Heaven under the name Olusola Julius Alabi, and was in the UK on a five-year tourist visa that did not allow him to work in the country.
He had previously pleaded guilty to two counts of possession of an identification document with improper intention relating to the offences.
The judge passed concurrent six-month custodial sentences for each offence and said the time had already been served by the defendant while he was on remand.
