A 'devious' rapist who befriended an underage girl in Piccadilly Gardens then 'lured' her back to his house has lost an appeal to reduce the length of his prison sentence. In January, Girmay Andes, then 28, was jailed for eight years for rape and two separate charges of sexual assault.
Manchester Crown Court heard Andes approached the victim, who was sitting with a friend and a group of males they'd met earlier, in Piccadilly Gardens at around 5am on July 14, 2022. He asked her the time and claimed to have been robbed.
He then asked if she wanted cigarettes and they walked off towards a shop. When the victim's friend called her mobile, Andes took the phone off her, hung up, then refused to give it back.
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Andes and the girl then got a taxi back to his home on Moorside Street, Droylsden, where he 'had some weed'. As they entered the house Andes immediately locked the door, then took the victim upstairs to his bedroom and immediately locked that door as well.
He then raped the 'frozen' victim despite her telling him to stop, replying 'No babe, we're good'. After taking an unknown drug Andes passed out and the victim, said to have been 'in shock' at what had happened, managed to text and email a number of contacts, saying she was 'locked in a man's house and didn't know what to do'.
The victim then woke Andes up and told him her mum had tracked the address and called the police. He gave her £20 and told her get out of the area, adding she should hide behind some bins in case police drove by.
She caught a bus home, but was then contacted by police who picked her up and later arrested Andes. At the sentencing, Judge Patrick Field said that as a young immature girl, 'essentially on her own, in a very dangerous part of central Manchester in the early hours of the morning', the victim was 'particularly vulnerable'.
But at London's Appeal Court, Andes applied for leave to appeal against the length of his sentence, arguing the judge was 'wrong' to jail him for so long as the 'evidence did not allow for a finding that [the victim] was particularly vulnerable'. Lord Justice Coulson, Mrs Justice Farbey and Mr Justice Constable rejected the appeal.
In a written decision they said Andes 'lured an isolated girl in a devious and sustained plan in order to rape her'.
"The seriousness of the offence meant [Andes] could expect a severe sentence," they wrote. "The overall sentence of eight years imprisonment for all three offences cannot arguably be said to be manifestly excessive or wrong in principle."
