England: legal first in rape case as attacker convicted without victim cross-examination

In a legal first, the jury accepted Ceri Linden’s evidence from “beyond the grave” to convict fake taxi driver Masood Mansouri, 33, of kidnapping and raping her.

Ms Linden, 20, killed herself five days after Mr Mansouri raped her last August.

At Chester Crown Court the video of her interview with police in which she gave details of the attack was played to the jury who returned a unanimous guilty verdict following a five hour and 20 minute deliberation.

The case is a legal first because it is the first time in England and Wales that the evidence of a victim has gone unchallenged by cross-examination.

Mr Mansouri who is Iranian and has lived in the UK for a decade claimed they had had consensual sex.

Judge Raj Shetty said:“What you have done is abducted a vulnerable young girl from the street by artifice.

“You have treated her with complete disdain and contempt.”

The court heard Ms Linden was trying to hail a taxi to join friends on an evening out when Mr Mansouri, who owns a carwash, picked her up just after midnight.

Nicholas Williams, prosecuting, explained that he pulled up to the kerb purporting to be a taxi driver and Ms Linden got in.

Mr Mansouri said he was heading to the city centre, however, Ms Linden realised he was entering a residential area, a suburb of Chester called Saltney.

She texted a friend three times.

The first message, at 12:28AM, said she had been kidnappend; the second that it was not a joke and the third: “Literally scared.”

In the video of the interview she told Cheshire police: “It was against my will to go to his house.”

After she was raped she ran out of Mr Mansouri’s house and hid behind a bush before she was found by neighbours.

Subsequently, she took a taxi and met her friends – the driver remembered that she had been upset and was crying.

The rape was not reported immediately, but Ms Linden asked her mother to arrange a doctor’s appointment.

In the interview she told officers she felt “worthless and helpless.”

Expert evidence was given by Fareed Bashir, consultant forensic psychologist, who said Ms Linden had an “emotionally unstable personality disorder” and that six months prior to her death she had been hospitalised nine times as a result of suicide attempts.

Ms Linden committed suicide five days after the attack by taking an overdose of her mother’s prescription medicine.

Mr Mansouri was sentenced to six years for the kidnap, ten for sexual assault and a further 13 for rape - all of which will run concurrently.