Predator rapist handed indefinite sentence

Judge Nicholas Price QC said Brian Witty, 41, was a “predatory rapist” as he told the former Territorial Army Parachute Regiment captain he would serve at least eight years before he could be considered for release.

Witty, who told one victim who rejected him: “I don’t believe this, I’m a good-looking bloke”, was convicted last month of three rapes and one sexual assault on four women between 1995 and 2011.

Judge Price, sentencing Witty at Kingston Crown Court yesterday, told him he was a “bullying, self-obsessed, arrogant sexual predator who was determined to indulge in fulfilling your desires, irrespective and dismissive of their pleas”.

Witty, of Twickenham Road, in Teddington, south-west London, met two of his victims through a dating website and preyed on the others after chance encounters in bars.

But after he was arrested he claimed the sexual encounters were consensual.

After he was found guilty, the court heard Witty had previously been convicted of common assault on the mother of his son and also had a police caution for assaulting his then partner in 2005.

Judge Price jailed him for six years for a rape in 1995, to run concurrently with three separate indeterminate sentences for two other rapes and a sexual assault, and told him he would serve a minimum of eight years behind bars.

“There is no doubt in my mind that you present a very real danger to women, and the only appropriate sentence in your case is one of imprisonment for public protection,” the judge said.

“It is clear to me you set out to prey on vulnerable women. You hid your base intentions behind a veneer of charm and lulled your victims into a false sense of security.

“Each of them was beguiled into believing that with your military background and apparent social attributes that you were a gentleman and would behave as one.

“Each of your victims described in chilling evidence how you went from being plausible and caring into a bullying, self-obsessed, arrogant sexual predator who was determined to indulge in fulfilling your desires, irrespective and dismissive of their pleas that you should desist.”

Witty was placed on the sex offenders register for life, and if released will be on licence for life.

The first of his four offences occurred on January 5 1995, with a woman Witty had originally met at a pub in Fulham, south-west London.

They had a consensual one-night stand and it was five months before Witty bumped into her again at the same venue.

“She told him there would be no repeat of their tryst but agreed to go home with him. When she turned down his advances again, Witty leapt out of bed, saying: “I don’t believe this, I’m a good-looking bloke.”

He finally stopped pressing her for sex and she fell asleep, only to wake and find him raping her. She went to the police and Witty was arrested but told officers the sex had been consensual.

Jurors heard Witty met his final victim through the same dating website he had been using when he met his second victim and they arranged to meet at a pub in Teddington on August 3 last year.

He invited the woman back to his flat where he had sex with her despite her saying “no”. She left “in distress, shaking and crying”, and immediately told police she had been raped.

Witty was arrested at his flat within two-and-a-half hours and again claimed the sex was consensual.

Yesterday, the court heard that despite being arrested and interviewed after the rape at his home address in 1995, again after the sexual assault in 2006 and after another rape in 2008, charges were never brought by the Crown Prosecution Service.