MAN RAPED WOMAN HE MET ON DATING SITE AFTER SHE REJECTED HIM FOR BEING “MORBIDLY OBESE”, TRIAL TOLD
October 8, 2019
Phoebe Southworth
Telegraph
A man raped a woman he met through Match.com after she refused to sleep with him because he was fatter than his profile picture suggested, a court heard.
Christopher Schubert, 44, described himself on the dating website as a "big cuddly bear" who was "looking for his mate".
He exchanged flirty messages with the woman and told her he made a living by selling designer clothes and shoes on auctioneer website eBay, Oxford Crown Court heard today.
They arranged to meet at her Oxford home where he allegedly raped and sexually assaulted her when she rejected his advances.
The complainant told police that when he arrived at her property on January 30 last year he looked nothing like the photos he had posted online.
She said he was morbidly obese and his stomach was so large that his shirt did not fully cover it.
"When he arrived, obviously I knew straight away that he didn't look like he did in his profile picture," the woman told officers in an interview played to jurors at Oxford Crown Court.
"To be honest with you, I thought 'you're absolutely huge. There is absolutely no way.'
"It doesn't stop me liking someone because of his size but it was never my intention to sleep with him.
"I had already said we were not going to have sex. You end up getting to know someone over a cup of tea and I invited him in to be sociable. I thought he was going to have a cup of tea and chat."
Jurors heard that the pair ended up "kissing and cuddling" that evening but there was no "explicit plan" for further sexual activity.
The woman said they had discussed sharing a bed but she had made it clear they would not be having sex.
"Given his size, we would not have fitted comfortably in the same bed," she told police.
"There is personal space and there is personal space. Even if I had a king size bed I'd have no personal space at all. I'd have nowhere to go.
"There had already been a conversation. He had invited me over to his and he had a king size bed. I said to him that if I felt comfortable I'd sleep in a king size bed, but I'd have my personal space."
Schubert allegedly performed a sex act on the woman before raping her in her bedroom. The sex was not consensual and caused her "excruciating pain", the prosecution allege.
A medical examination carried out after the alleged rape showed "lacerations and abrasions" which were consistent with "rough" sex, the jury heard.
Charles Ward-Jackson, prosecuting, said: "This is a case about a woman who was raped and sexually assaulted in her own home by a man she had just met on an internet dating site - that man being Schubert."
Schubert, of Orchard Close, St Neots, Cambridgeshire, left the property in the early hours of the morning to drive back to his own home and the complainant reported him to police that morning.
He claims the sex was consensual and denies two counts of rape and two counts of sexual assault by penetration. The trial continues.
Match.com is one of the UK's biggest dating sites, with around three million users.
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