A soldier who raped, strangled and urinated on a woman he met on a dating app has been jailed.
Sam Evans, 29, was an Army corporal who was part of 29 Commando in the Royal Artillery Regiment.
He met his victim on Tinder and the pair exchanged messages until meeting in the early hours of July 3 last year, after she went on a night out with friends and they bumped into each other by ‘pure chance’.
But when they returned to Evans’ flat in Ker Street, Devonport, he carried out a ‘prolonged’ and ‘terrifying’ attack in which his victim was strangled until she almost lost consciousness.
Today Evans, from Plymouth in Devon, was jailed for 14 years at Plymouth Crown Court, with a further four years on licence.
He had pleaded not guilty to seven charges but was found guilty of one count of rape, two of assault by penetration, one of assault occasioning actual bodily harm,and one of penetration after a trial.
He was found not guilty of a second count of rape and a third of assault by penetration by the jury.
Addressing Evans during sentencing, Judge Robert Linford said: ‘The two of you found yourself back at your flat. You produced a vibrator and she told you not to get any ideas.
‘That was a message you should have heeded, and you did not. Instead you started to touch her over her clothing.
‘She said you had got the wrong idea about her – you ignored this sign and laughed at her.’
The judge described how Evans squeezed his victim’s throat ‘so hard she could not breathe’.
She was then slapped around the face repeatedly and ordered to remove her clothing before Evans urinated both on and inside her.
He added: ‘Your life continued with no more than a hangover. But hers was utterly devastated.
‘Everyone who knows the sober hard working you, knows a gentle, kind, considerate man.
‘But that is incomprehensible when set alongside what you did that night through a combination of alcohol and sheer violent lust.
‘It was an utterly savage attack, the stuff of nightmares.’
Giving evidence, the woman said she remembered little from the night until she came around on a bed and feared she would never leave alive.
She said she went out for what should have been a normal evening with friends as a ‘normal, positive and happy young woman’, but added: ‘That version of myself never came home.’
In a victim impact statement the victim said she found it difficult to eat and has been hospitalised with malnourishment since the horrific incident – and has also been unable to work.
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She added: ‘I have lost my faith in humanity – it has had a huge physical impact on me and my day to day living. I am not sleeping properly and when I do I have nightmares.
‘Sam Evans has done irreparable damage to my life. At this time, I can not see a way to move forward.
‘Despite all of this I have tried to make sense of it all. I have always had unanswered questions as to why he did this to me.
‘I have tried to conclude on the morning of the attack he was physically stronger. But I have a type of strength and self-respect he could never understand.’
Evans was described as a man of previous good character and Judge Linford said he had shown ‘genuine remorse’ and written a letter of apology to his victim.
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