A Glenrothes teenager who posed as a taxi driver to lure a woman into a car before raping her with an accomplice was jailed yesterday.
Abel Muntean,19, picked up the woman on New Year’s Day morning and abducted and raped her before driving her to a house where his co-accused Raul Novac also raped her.
Romanian Novac, 34, was also jailed after he was convicted of the attack following a trial in which the pair had denied raping the woman who was intoxicated and incapable of giving consent.
At the High Court in Edinburgh, Judge Lord Uist described the offences as “appalling”.
He said: “In your case Abel Muntean you have been convicted by the jury of rape committed by yourself and being an accessory to the rape committed by the second accused.”
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“This kind of violence against women cannot be tolerated in any civilised society.
“Each of you should be in no doubt that in due course you will be sentenced to lengthy terms of imprisonment.”
Muntean, who was 17 at the time, pretended to the woman at Hunter Street, Kirkcaldy, in Fife, on January 1 in 2017 that the car he had was a taxi and induced her to enter the vehicle.
He then took her in the car to the Esplanade at Kirkcaldy and took off her dress and sexually assaulted and raped her.
Muntean then drove her to a house in the town’s Nelson Street where Novac also raped the woman.
The 20-year-old woman told the court that she had gone out for New Year’s Eve but had been asked to leave the club where she had been drinking.
She said: “I can remember walking down the street a wee bit. I remember I was really drunk.”
She borrowed another woman’s phone and tried to call for a cab.
“There was lots of taxis about. I thought one of them is bound to be able to take me.” she said.
“Then I saw someone getting into a car that looked like a taxi. I opened the door and asked ‘could you take me home?’ He said ‘yes’.”
She said it looked like there was a meter.
“I asked him if he was a taxi and he could take me home and he said ‘yes’,” she said. She said Muntean pulled out a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and asked her if she wanted a drink.
The woman said she took a drink and added: “I can’t remember anything after that.”
She said her next memory was waking up naked in a bed in a strange house. She said: “My body was in agony.”
Muntean, of Dornoch Place, Glenrothes, and Novac – who returned to Romania after he was freed on bail but was brought back to Scotland after he was later traced in Ireland – denied the attacks.
After they were found guilty, sentence was deferred on both for the preparation of background reports and they were remanded in custody.
They were both placed on the sex offenders’ register.
