Alex Hepburn Found Guilty Of Rape After Retrial

English cricketer Alex Hepburn, the former Worcestershire allrounder, has been found guilty of raping a sleeping woman following a retrial at Worcester Crown Court. The former county cricketer now faces a prison sentence after being convicted on one charge of rape. The 23-year old was cleared of a second charge relating to the same victim, after the jury in his original trial, in January, had failed to return a verdict.

Hepburn assaulted the victim at his Worcester flat after she had had consensual sex with his then teammate Joe Clarke on April 1, 2017. According to reports in English media, Hepburn will be sentenced at Hereford Crown Court on April 30. Jurors deliberated for 10 hours and 53 minutes before delivering an unanimous verdict of guilty on one count of oral rape. A distraught Hepburn was then seen slumping into his seat, covering his face with his hands before sobbing.

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The attack was part of a sexual conquest ‘game’. The disturbing details of it came to the fore through his WhatsApp messages that the police discovered. The messages, however, were not used during the at either of his trials. The startling messages suggested he’d had sex with 60 women during a previous ‘stat game’.

“Oi last night was my 60th. Want 80 by the end of Worcs,” read one of the messages from Hepburn.

Other messages sent by Hepburn read

“It feels like there is a population of 150 birds in Worcester and we have pumped every single one of them” and “get them blind and then back to ours”.

The Crown Court also heard that a couple of days before the attack, Hepburn, Mr Clarke and another friend known only as Tom, set up the WhatsApp group called ‘Stat Chat’. The members of the group were required to reveal details of all their sexual encounters.

Jurors heard Hepburn attacked his victim as he wanted to beat Joe Clarke who had won the ‘competition’ last year. The victim had fallen asleep after having sex with Mr Clarke at the apartment in Albion Mill, Worcester. She woke to find Hepburn straddling her while she was still ‘in a daze’ and pushed him away before running from the flat where she was found in a state of distress by a passer-by.

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The victim told police she had thought it had been Clarke ‘being cheeky’ and ‘went along with it’ before realising it was Hepburn. In his defence, Hepburn told the jury that the woman had her eyes open and was ‘engaging’ in the acts. The Australian-born cricketer, however, admitted he sent ‘disgusting, horrible and embarrassing’ WhatsApp messages during his evidence earlier this week.

(Inputs from The Sun)