Uber driver jailed for six years for attack on tourist

Muhammad Naveed was sent to prison for at least six years
Isobelle Gidley13 June 2017
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An Uber driver in Australia was today sent to prison for at least six years for raping a young tourist in an attack described by a judge as “predatory”.

New South Wales District Court heard Muhammad Naveed, 41, had offering to drive the woman to the address in Sydney address where she was staying after seeing her standing outside a nightclub.

The woman, who had been partying for most of the evening, said she had got into Naveed’s car and dropped in and out of sleep as she was being driven home.

Naveed stopped in a petrol station on the way and purchased condoms, before driving into a dark laneway, helping the woman get into the back seat and then raping her.

She told the court she tried to tell Naveed to get away.

“I didn’t have any strength in me and nothing was really working,” the woman told the court.

She later sent a text to a friend saying: “I had a pretty horrific night.”

Naveed claimed they had consensual sex in the back of his car.

But Judge Payne disagreed, telling him: “The community completely abhors this sort of predatory behaviour.”

She added that the woman had been made particularly vulnerable because she could not stay awake, was alone and did not have access to public transport.

“To take advantage of that situation…is a very serious matter indeed. She was assaulted in the vehicle, which she thought was a taxi, and taken to a location in which she was assaulted,” the judge said of the attack on October 18, 2015.

“Her vulnerability is a matter which aggravated the offence.”

The judge added that Naveed, who had initially denied rape, had written a letter in which he said he realised he had made a mistake and accepted the jury’s guilty verdict.

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