A 32-year-old man has admitted religiously aggravated assault after raping a Sikh woman in her home, spewing anti-Muslim abuse during the attack as he targeted her because he believed she was Muslim.
John Ashby subjected an innocent Sikh woman in Birmingham to racist and anti-Muslim abuse as he raped her at her home last October.
Ashby pleaded guilty and admitted to charges of rape, robbery, intentional strangulation, and religiously aggravated assault at Birmingham Crown Court today.
The 32-year-old had originally pleaded innocent, but then asked to see his barrister and changed his pleas around one hour after a member of the public approached the dock to tell him to “sort your sh*t out.”
The incident during the court proceedings took place as Ashby began mumbling under his breath during the Crown’s presentation of evidence.
The victim was a Sikh woman whom Ashby had “targeted” after spotting her on a bus, after which he followed her to her home in Walsall on foot last October.
Police body-cam footage from the incident was played in the court proceedings to the jury, described as “harrowing”, where the victim says her attacker called her a “bloody Muslim b*tch” when she was comforted by a female officer.
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‘I’m your British master’
The woman told police that she was raped in the bathroom by the man, who had claimed to be her “British master”.
In a video interview played during the trial, the victim told police: “He had a stick in his hand. I said ‘who are you?’ and I started screaming.”
“He switched off the light. He said ‘I just want fun with you.’ He said ‘you are a f***ing Muslim bitch’, I said ‘I am not a Muslim, I am a Sikh.’”
The court heard that during the attack, Ashby barraged his victim with a tirade of vicious anti-Muslim abuse, wrongly believing that she was a Muslim.
During a police interview, when shown a photograph of the victim and asked whether or not he knew her, Ashby asked why she was not wearing a hijab.
When booked into custody in a police station in Perry Barr, he stated, “you never see any Englishmen in Perry Barr anymore”, the court heard.
Court describes ordeal
The court described in detail the ordeal as per the woman’s statements: “Despite her screams, he told her to take her clothes off, he struck her with the stick, and he put his hands around her neck to strangle her and demanded that she climb into the bathtub.”
“He turned on the hot water tap and began pouring water over her, telling her to say ‘hallelujah’ as he did so.”
The prosecution said that after raping the woman, Ashby told her to go into the bedroom and lie on the bed, saying again that he was there “to have fun” while referring to his private parts as being white British.
Ashby had only left the woman’s premises when he heard a noise outside and became “spooked”, after which he took the victim’s jewellery and a mobile phone and ran away.
Ashby is scheduled to be sentenced this Friday, with the judge warning him that he was considering giving him a life sentence.
“It seems to me that a stranger who breaks into a woman’s house, who commits these offences and does so expressing hostility to her on the basis of her presumed religion is a dangerous person,” he said.
