DNA has linked rapists to rape cases decades ago.
- A British man was sentenced to prison for raping a 13-year-old girl in the 1970s.
- The girl became pregnant due to rape and gave her daughter to adoption.
- The 74-year-old man admitted to having sex with the victim and claimed that she agreed.
On Tuesday, a British court sentenced a rapist to 11 years in prison based on DNA evidence from a daughter who was pregnant in the attack decades ago.
In a case dating back to the 1970s, the Birmingham Criminal Court in central England ruled that 74-year-old Carvel Bennett raped a 13-year-old girl who was pregnant as a result of an attack.
The victim gave up the baby for foster care and adoption.
However, her daughter, like the victim, was unable to determine her identity due to legal reasons, and her conception was discovered when she was 18 years old.
Then, she decided to pursue her mother’s case. The DNA samples provided showed that Bennett was 22 million times more likely to be her father than any other unknown Afro-Caribbean man who had nothing to do with him.
Bennett, who initially denied the father-son relationship, admitted to having sex with the victim, but claimed that she agreed and deceived him into believing that she was 16 years old.
Judge Martin Hurst said that Bennett was “blaming the victim.”
Hirst said that her daughter “has encountered many closures, and basically she had to persuade her mother to relive the trauma” and praised her for fighting for justice.
In a statement read to the court before the sentencing, the victim described how she felt that she was “handling this alone.”
People tell me how sick I was when I was a kid. I bear his shame, although for me, the shame is mine.
West Midlands police stated that the police had spoken to the victim, but she did not want to lodge a complaint at that time or when she contacted her again in 2014.
She changed her mind in 2019 and the investigation led to Bennett’s arrest.
