Rape suspect: I'm gay

A picture of the man accused of a series of sex attacks on girls and women in and around the M25 area can be published today.

The photograph of Antoni Imiela, 49, can be shown for the first time after a judge lifted a ban on its publication.

His nine victims were aged between 10 and 52, Maidstone Crown Court was told.

This afternoon Imiela, who denies all charges, wept as he told the court: "I've been gay most of my life."

The prosecution alleges that Imiela pounced on his victims from undergrowth near public spaces such as Wimbledon Common and Putney Heath.

His first alleged rape victim in November 2001 was a 10-year-old girl he snatched outside a youth club in Ashford, Kent.

DNA traces provided billion-to-one evidence against him, the jury has been told. It was 13 months before he was caught despite a massive police hunt.

During that time Imiela, a track labourer on the railways, carried out the rest of his attacks, including raping one victim twice and raping two women in separate attacks on the same day, the court heard. After the rapist struck in October 2002, an e-fit picture was produced which resembled Imiela. Detectives called at his home and took a routine DNA sample from him.

Realising he would be caught when the match to his first rape was made, Imiela committed one last attack, it is claimed. In a "final act of defiance" he snatched a 10-year-old girl from the streets and subjected her to a five-hour ordeal in his van.

Imiela, from Appledore, Kent, today denied a prosecution claim that he drove around the M25 area looking for female victims. He insisted he was only interested in men and spent his nights cruising gay haunts. "I would go and meet people," he said. He added: "It was pretty stupid like, but I've already told you I was gay, so I was meeting men, for the usual gay things.

"I used to go up into London a lot, the West End and Hampstead Heath and the usual gay bars, Richmond, Kingston, Maidenhead, Winchester, St Albans, London Colney, Abbots Langley."

He said he also went with "a few prostitutes," adding: "I was mad. I don't even know why I went with them."

Imiela said he had told his wife Christine that he had been gay in the past but never told her the full story "so she didn't think too much about it".

Mrs Imiela - who sat in the public gallery wiping away tears and covering her face with her hands - had told the court that she had found condoms in his wallet.

Asked about the condoms today, Imiela replied he needed them in order "to stop catching diseases from prostitutes and men".

He also told the court of an affair he had with a woman called Lou who he met in 2000 while she waited at a bus stop on the Stanhope estate in Ashford, close to where his first alleged victim, a 10-year-old girl, was attacked. As the girl's parents watched from the public gallery, Imiela told the jury that he had seen Lou five or six times before she started asking for money for sex.

Imiela said: "I get on well with women. I've probably had a lot of girls who were friends. There are probably only three or four women that I've actually stopped with."

The court heard that Imiela was born in Germany in 1954 to a Polish father and German mother who had both been refugees.

He said they came to the UK in 1961. His family first moved to Worthing before relocating to Co Durham several years later.

Imiela pleads not guilty to nine counts of rape and further charges of attempted rape, indecent assault and kidnap of a 10-year-old in Birmingham in November, 2002.

His barrister Rebecca Poulet appealed to the jury to keep an open mind. She told them: "You are going to hear of two significant identification features about this man that none of the complainants has made any reference to at all."

The court heard that his arms are covered in tattoos which none of the victims had noticed on their attacker and that he has a speech defect and cannot say his "Rs" which none of the rape victims detected during their ordeal. The case continues.