Barrister jailed for raping woman he met on Tinderon September 15, 2022 at 4:37 pm

A barrister has been found guilty by an Old Bailey jury of raping a woman.

Robin Jacobs, 39, unexpectedly initiated anal sex during a consensual encounter, the court heard.

The woman, who met Jacobs through the Tinder dating app, said she twice told him to stop and screamed at him before he moved away after 20 to 30 seconds.

Jacobs, from South Woodford, east London, said he believed the woman had consented. He shouted from the dock “I didn’t do it” after he was convicted.

Jurors deliberated for four hours and 47 minutes to find him guilty of rape, by a majority verdict of 10 to two, following a retrial.

Jacobs appeared anxious and agitated in the dock before shouting: “I didn’t do it, I didn’t do it. I was telling you the truth. I could have lied but I told you the truth. Oh my God.”

Before briefly adjourning the court, Judge John Hillen KC told the defendant to “calm down”.

Judge Hillen said the evidence showed Jacobs had taken “absolutely no steps” to check if the woman consented to anal sex and the jury would have decided it was not reasonable for him to think she had.

Stephen Rose, defending, said the court was dealing with a “mistake by the defendant of a few seconds”.

Previously, the court had heard how the couple met through Tinder in the summer of 2017. It was on their third date that the rape took place.

In a videoed interview played in court, the woman told police what happened.

She said Jacobs told her to “wait a minute” before forcing himself on to her.

“I told him to stop twice and he did not. I screamed ‘get off’, then he stopped and he did move away,” she said.

“At that point I was just face down. I did not know what to do with myself, in quite a lot of pain.”

She said: “He asked me if I was going to report it to the police. He asked me if he would see me again, and then he also offered me paracetamol.

“There was no discussion, absolutely no warning, there was no touching, foreplay, warning. There was nothing.”

The woman was examined at a specialist sexual assault clinic and found to have a fresh laceration measuring 2.5cm by 2mm, jurors were told.

Experts agreed such an injury was likely to have been inflicted with “at least moderate force”, the court heard.

Jacobs denied he had used the woman’s body to “pleasure himself”, saying: “That’s not what I am about.”

Sentencing was adjourned to a later date.

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