A second man has been jailed for sexually assaulting a teenager transported from Romania to a Kirkcaldy flat to be forced into prostitution.
Alexandru Lache has finally been brought to justice almost six years after terrifying a vulnerable woman in a Pratt Street flat.
Lache’s co-accused Octav-George Dimitru was last year convicted and locked up following the horrifying assault on the then-teenager.
The woman, now in her early 20s, cannot be identified for legal reasons and is now living outside Scotland.
Lache will be deported when he has served his three-year prison sentence, his solicitor confirmed.
Victim’s horror
At co-accused Dimitru’s trial last July, the pair’s victim gave evidence via a video link from a court in Spain.
She recalled travelling by coach before being picked up in a car in England and driven to Kirkcaldy.
The court heard she ended up having sex with about 20 men for money before she could alert police.
The woman said it was weeks after her ordeal began she finally managed to dial 999 from under a duvet after Dimitru and another man “tried to rape” her.
The woman, aided in court by a Romanian interpreter, said she had gone for a nap after cleaning and cooking for Dimitru a few hours earlier.
“I sat on the bed, the two of them were naked, they entered my bedroom.
“Then one of them started to pull my legs and the other one took my arms.”
The woman said they told her not to scream or struggle so the neighbours would not hear.
She said: “While I was struggling I started to cry.”
She recalled the men saying “gang bang” to her and that she “started to shake” and was “scared”.
She waited a couple of hours for Dimitru to go to sleep and phoned police shortly before 6am on the morning of September 20 2019.
After his trial, Dimitru was found guilty of knowingly permitting his flat to be used for the purposes of habitual prostitution in September 2019.
He was also found guilty of assault with intent to rape.
Second man convicted
Lache stood trial separately earlier this year and was found guilty by jurors at Kirkcaldy Sheriff Court of one charge of assaulting the woman with the intention of raping her.
On September 20 2019, the now-30-year-old exposed his penis, seized her arms and legs, struggled with her, put a hand over her mouth and made sexualised comments.
Sentencing had been deferred following the trial, which concluded in early May, for Lache to be interviewed by social workers.
Solicitor Martin McGuire explained his client, who was aided in the dock by a Romanian interpreter, has been on remand in HMP Perth since December 23 last year.
Mr McGuire said: “Mr Lache first came to the UK as a migrant.
“He worked in a variety of different unskilled jobs, both in Scotland and England.
“He doesn’t really have any history of offending – I think there’s one previous conviction for shoplifting.
“At the conclusion of Mr Lache’s custodial term, he will be deported.”
Sheriff James Williamson jailed Lache for three years and placed him on the sex offenders register indefinitely.
He explained the prison term was the same as that imposed on his co-accused, who was given an extra nine months for other offending.
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