A millionaire businessman drugged and raped two ‘stupefied’ women while working as a hotel pianist almost 30 years ago, a jury heard Tuesday.
The allegations
Former tech tycoon Lawrence Jones, 55, is alleged to have pounced on both women at his flat while earning a living as a musician in the early 1990s.
In both cases, they were rendered ‘stupefied and left partially conscious but unable to react’, prosecutor Eloise Marshall KC told jurors.
She said it was the Crown’s case that the UKFast founder used drugs to ‘facilitate’ the rape of both women.
One was ‘given something to sniff, which had an immediate impact on her’, lasting the ‘very few minutes’ it took Jones to rape her, Ms Marshall said.
The other was ‘given a glass of wine and something which she believed was cannabis to smoke’, but ‘again the effect was pretty quick’, she added.
The impact ‘was not the effect of one glass of wine or a few puffs on a joint of cannabis’, jurors at Manchester Crown Court heard yesterday.
Where the rape happened
Both rapes are believed to have taken place in the same flat in Salford, Greater Manchester between 1993 and 1994 when Jones was about 25, she said.
However they did not come forward until ‘many years’ later, by which time Jones was ‘in the public eye’ as a result of becoming a successful entrepreneur, jurors were told.
The first alleged victim, Woman A, met Jones while working in Manchester city centre, the trial heard.
More details about the incident
She took a dislike to Jones after his response when she was ‘complaining’ about her ‘love life’, Ms Marshall said.
Jones allegedly told her ‘well you just need a damn good seeing to, you just need a good f******, don’t you?’.
According to Woman A, ‘she not only disagreed with his politics but found him arrogant’, jurors heard.
However in late 1993, Jones asked her to come to his flat for a drink and a ‘chat’ so they could ‘get to know one another’, it was alleged.
She agreed and arrived alone at the ‘dimly lit’ flat after midnight, where Jones poured her a glass of wine – probably red – before rolling a ‘spliff’.
He then sat down next to her – ‘manspreading towards her on the sofa’, she later recalled – while she had a couple of drags on the joint and one glass of wine, Ms Marshall said.
How she ‘felt’ raped
Waking up, she felt ‘really, really rough, really sick with a headache as if she had had a big night out’ rather than how she would expect to feel after just one glass of wine, she said.
Feeling ‘numb’ and ‘in shock’, she went home after her shift and had a shower.
Woman A just wanted to feel ‘normal’, she later told police.
She told three friends at the time about what had allegedly happened, Ms Marshall said, and later spoke to a counsellor and a police officer, although she did not make a formal complaint at that stage.
Her account to them was ‘consistent’ with what she would go on to tell police in 2021, jurors were told.
Victim Impact statement
The second alleged incident involved a woman in her early 20s whom Jones had met while playing piano at Manchester bars, and also trying to establish a company managing musicians.
She told police she was chatting with Jones – who she described as having ‘poor hygiene’ and ‘a real ‘Ew’ about him’ – at his flat in 1993 or 1994 when he asked how old she was.
When she gave her age, Jones allegedly replied ‘look at you, you’re gorgeous’.
Jones then allegedly told her to sniff a small medicine bottle with a clear liquid inside it.
Woman B agreed – something the court heard now ‘surprises’ her – ‘and instantly felt really, really drunk’, Ms Marshall said.
The court heard she felt ‘Whoa’ and decided just to ‘lie back’ on a bed as she felt ‘light-headed and not completely conscious’.
But as she was lying on her back with her eyes shut, Jones had sex with her, the prosecutor said.
She told jurors that Woman B recalled how ‘there was no kissing, no conversation and no foreplay’.
It lasted about 30 seconds, according to Woman B who said it had been ‘bizarre and so fast, and so sort of opportunistic’.
Jurors were told her reaction had been almost like: ‘Did that really happen?
‘Rather than being ‘angry’, she felt ‘shocked’, but also that it was her fault as she had not ‘fought back’, Ms Marshall said.
Why she didn’t lodge a formal complaint
She questioned at the time whether it could be classified as rape as it had not been violent, she had not been pinned down and she did not try to scream or push him off, jurors were told.
As a result, she was subsequently not ‘confident enough’ to accuse Jones of raping her, describing herself as ‘naïve’.
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Feeling no-one would believe her, she decided to ‘park it’, although she later told her future husband and a close friend, Ms Marshall said.
She made a formal complaint to police in April 2022.
Interviewed by detectives in February 2022 about Woman A’s allegation, Jones made no comment to ‘almost every question’ he was asked, Ms Marshall said.
He provided a prepared statement in which he denied raping her, with or without the use of drugs.
However in a prepared statement he accepted having known her but ‘vehemently’ denied raping her.
The trial will hear evidence about the different drugs that Jones may have used based on the women’s accounts.
Jones, of Hale Barns, Greater Manchester, has pleaded not guilty to both rape counts.
The trial continues.
