A judge has decided a Coventry man who raped one woman and blackmailed a mother and daughter does not pose a danger in the future, after branding him a ‘posturing fantasist.’
The judge at Warwick Crown Court jailed Munir Dawod for a total of 11 years and nine months – but said he did not believe it was necessary to make him subject to an extended sentence.
Dawod (33) of Queen Isabels Avenue, Cheylesmore, Coventry, had denied two charges of rape, one of assault and two charges of blackmail – but was found guilty of all five offences.
Jailing him following an adjournment for an ‘assessment of dangerousness’ to be carried out on him, Judge Peter Cooke also ordered him to register as a sex offender for life.
The judge told him: “It is a narrow thing, but I have decided you do not have to be sentenced under the provisions as a dangerous offender.
“You have become a posturing fantasist who likes to be seen as a hard man, but you are not so much Scarface as an am-dram Al Pacino.”
He said Dawod’s repeated attack on his first victim had been ‘particularly cruel and unpleasant,’ and warranted a 15-month sentence consecutive to nine-and-a-half years for the rapes, with an further 12 months for the blackmail offences.
Prosecutor Siobhan Collins had said that in the summer of last year a woman fell asleep on the bedroom floor of a house in Hillfields, Coventry, where she had been socialising with friends.
Dawod, who she knew as Roberto, a name he had created for himself as part of a false persona, woke her, and ‘it was not a pleasant greeting, because he immediately kicked her to the head.’
He asked another man who was with him ‘Are you sure it was her?’ When told he was, he began kicking and punching her.
“He produced a pair of orange gloves and put them on and produced a knife. The defendant then went on to strike her repeatedly to the head with the knife, kicking her as he did so.
“That caused her to bleed and to leave visible marks on the wall where she was cowering from him, crying and pleading with him and telling him she hadn’t done anything.”
When she was taken to the bathroom to clean herself up, Dawod followed and offered her money in exchange for her silence.
He then left and his victim went to hospital, but she left without being treated, and went to a first-aider friend who applied butterfly stitches to the wound he had caused.
Another woman, Belinda Gore, who lived with her adult children in Henley Green, Coventry, also knew Dawod as Roberto – and thought of him as someone to be afraid of.
In August her daughter Shana got back from walking a neighbour’s dog to find Dawod talking to her mother outside, and two women with him went inside, where they took crack cocaine and asked Shana for food.
But the mood changed, and Dawod complained that Shana had crashed his car into a fence – which was ‘partly true.’
Miss Collins explained that in June Dawod had taken their car, and when Shana had tried to get it back he had told her it was broken and offered his Citroen to drive as a replacement.
Shana felt she had no choice, but there was a problem with the steering and she hit a fence, although no damage was caused and he had told her at the time not to worry about it.
But on that night he began making threats, saying she would have to pay for the damage, and made them go with him to the house in Hillfields where he kept them in the living room.
He demanded that they get him £300, threatening that if they did not have it by 10.30 that night, he would return to their home, ‘take the front door off and finish whoever’s in there.’
He then let them leave, and they went home with his two female accomplices, and unsuccessfully tried to raise the money.
Meanwhile, Belinda’s son had called the police – and in their shed officers found a pair of orange gloves which had blood on them which matched that of Dawod’s first victim.
The following month that woman was at a friend’s flat when Dawod arrived in an aggressive and intimidating manner.
He ordered her to go into the lounge where he made her sit next to him, grabbed her hand and made her touch him over his clothes – then pulled out a small knife and forced her to perform oral sex on him.
He then pulled her back onto the sofa, pulled her lower clothes down and raped her again.
But because of what had happened to Belinda and Shana, the police had been looking for Dawod – and arrived at the flat very shortly after the rape.
He was arrested, and when she was taken to one side and spoken to by an officer, the woman revealed she had just been raped.
