A serial rapist who put three women through a horrific campaign of sexual abuse has been jailed.
Christopher Bell, 33, was in relationships with each of the survivors, one just a teenager, when he strangled them until they couldn’t breathe and sexually assaulted them.
He even forced two of them to have sex with other men against their will for his own disturbing fantasies.
All three of the brave survivors appeared at Durham Crown Court to describe the horrors of Bell’s abuse.
He pleaded guilty in the middle of their testimony.
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‘I am an empty shell compared to the girl I once was,’ one who was a teen at the time told the jury.
‘That girl died the moment Bell raped her and I will never get her back.
‘It has taken all I have to realise that I am not the one in the wrong. I am not to blame. I was a child. But even with this knowledge I am forced to live with the consequences of his actions.’
Another survivor told the court how Bell had isolated her from her friends and family and tracked her mobile phone.
‘At the time I felt unable to walk away from the situation as I had been isolated by Christopher. I rarely found myself in a situation when I was alone with him, and I now realise that this was yet another form of his control,’ she said.
‘Because of Christopher’s behaviour towards me – his sexual aggression, controlling nature, and manipulation – I lost all my self-confidence, was unable to work, and my mental health declined dramatically.’
Another woman said Bell preyed on the vulnerable.
She said: ‘Christopher Bell has never once stopped and admitted his behaviour towards me and his other victims, and he seems to live in his own fantasy world.
‘He will continue to prey on vulnerable people in my opinion because he caught me at my lowest when he met me after my relationship ended. I was employed and self-sufficient, but he left me broken emotionally and financially.
‘I think Christopher Bell needs to spend a lot of time in prison and he will do this again and again given the opportunity.’
He appeared at Durham Crown Court where he was sentenced for six counts of rape, one of strangulation, and one of assault by penetration.
Bell was sentenced to 24 years in prison followed by three years of licence supervision.
He was also placed on the sex offenders’ register for life and was handed a restraining order preventing him from contacting any of the women for 30 years.
Despite 215,000 reported rapes in the UK only a tiny fraction end up with a suspect charged, the Metro revealed today.
According to Freedom of Information data given exclusively to Metro, there have been 206,927 rape reports of women aged over 16 over the past five years.
Shockingly, only 6,374 women have seen their suspected attacker charged with only 240 men saying the same – a rate of just 2.97%.
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