A woman who was sexually assaulted by a convicted rapist said the women he hurt “will never be victims” in a defiant statement in court.
Shaun Bennett, now 19, of Banner Street, Liverpool, appeared at Liverpool Crown Court on Monday to be sentenced in relation to the sexual assault of a 16-year-old in 2020. In September 2021, he was sentenced to seven and a half years detention with a further five year extended licence for the rape of a 13-year-old which took place in 2019 when he was 15-years-old.
He committed this further sexual assault after being interviewed in relation to that rape. A court heard that at around 9pm one evening in 2020, the 16-year-old was walking with Bennett and left alone with him after her friend left, before the defendant pulled her into a nearby alleyway.
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Bennett forced her hands down his trousers, attempting to make her touch his penis, and ignored her refusals. He also tried to force her legs apart and attempted to touch her.
Bennett then smashed the 16-year-old's head against the wall of the alleyway, and continued grabbing her by the waist as she tried to get away, before she managed to escape. After the offence, he embarked on a “campaign of violence” against her, including threatening to kill her and her family over social media.
Bennett insinuated he had paid someone to kill her family, labelling the threats as a “promise”, and said he would “stab her nan in the back”, which the teenager found audio evidence of. He pleaded guilty to making threats to kill, but continued to deny inciting someone to engage in sexual activity until four days before cross examination was due to take place.
The woman wrote a victim impact statement that was read to the court during Bennett’s sentence hearing. In the statement, she said she was left feeling lonely and isolated by Bennett, but did not want to see herself as a victim.
It read: “I do not want to think of myself as a victim but as a fighter, it does not make me weak. He put me in a very dark place, I have never felt as lonely in my life as I did at that time.
“I had to sit day after day night after night with my own thoughts.” She detailed feeling scared to go out and in her own home after the attack, but she “did herself proud” by passing her GCSEs and getting into college.
She added: “I believe that he craved the power he got over me, he liked that I was afraid because he knew he could control me. I am so much stronger than you, I hope you learn your lesson. We are not and we will never be victims.”
Bennett was previously convicted for sexually abusing a young girl when he was 14, for which he received a 12-month referral order in 2018.
In 2019 he was caught with a knife. For possessing a bladed article, common assault and battery he was handed a Youth Rehabilitation Order. In sentencing, Judge David Aubrey said: “She told you not to do it, she was resisting as much as she could. She obviously wanted nothing to do with you.
“You would not accept that so you threatened to stab her nan which you described as a promise and not a threat.” He added: “She had rebuffed you, you had intended to show her that no one says no to you and to make her life an absolute misery.
“You succeeded for some time before the victim had the courage in her own mind not to allow you to control her anymore.” Bennett was sentenced to 13 months in detention for causing someone under 16 to engage in sexual activity, and two years for making threats to kill, to be served consecutively to each other and to his current sentence.
A restraining order banning Bennett from contacting the victim was implemented indefinitely, and he will be also subject to notification requirements indefinitely.
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