The Brussels serial rapist who was sentenced to 12 years in prison in 2020 for the sexual assault and rape of at least eight young women – many of them university students – has been convicted again.
The serial rapist received an additional one-year prison sentence on Tuesday for the kidnapping and rape of a young woman whose case was initially closed because the perpetrator could not be identified, Bruzz reports.
The serial rapist was active between 2016 and 2019, often picking up his victims near the campuses of ULB and VUB or at Place Eugène Flagey (Flageyplein) in Ixelles by posing as a taxi driver.
He preyed on women who had been drinking and gained their trust by wearing the uniform of Brussels transit company STIB, who was his employer at the time. He was caught in part because a victim shared her experience with other students on Facebook.
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That led to an investigation from the public prosecutor’s office, which connected the incident to other rapes.
“My client was kidnapped and raped in 2017,” said lawyer Caroline Poiré. “She immediately filed a report, but because there were insufficient elements to identify the perpetrator, the case was closed in 2018 without consequence. I subsequently asked for the investigation to be reopened, as there were huge similarities with the rapes of the victims in the other case case.”
Those similarities included the description of the vehicle, and the victim later was able to recognise both the man and his house in a photo. A DNA analysis also linked him to facts.
