suffered a six hour ordeal after being abducted, gagged and rapped in a van
converted into a ‘mobile dungeon’. The 24-year-old said she feared for her life
after she was kidnapped at knifepoint by serial sexual offender Kevin John
Hills.
on bail for downloading child pornography at the time of the kidnap. The young
woman was approached by Hills in the red light district in Highfields,
Leicester where she worked as a prostitute.
When she followed Hills to the van, he pulled out a knife and forced her into
the van, Leicester Crown Court was told.
After seeing her tormentor jailed, the victim said she is constantly reminded
of the attack and still thinks about it everyday.
‘It has ruined my life. I can’t be on my own, I feel vulnerable and scared all
the time, but I am determined to try to beat the horrible shadow this man has
cast over my life.
‘The sentence is sufficient but I wish he could stay in jail forever. I hate
him. I really thought I was going to die.’
After she had her hands tied and mouth covered with tape, the woman tried to
throw herself from the moving Vauxhall van, but Hills said: ‘Sit still. It
makes
no odds to me if you’re dead or alive.
Judge Sylvia De Bertodano said: ‘It’s the stuff of people’s worst nightmares.’
Realising what was about to happen she thought leaping from the van was ‘the
lesser evil’, Andrew Easteal, prosecuting said.
Hills, from Beumont Leys, Leicester pulled her back into the vehicle, hit her
around the head and shoved her into the footwell, before driving her to an
isolated spot near Cropston reservoir.
Mr Easteal said: ‘He’d converted his high-top van into a mobile dungeon,
designed so the victim could be restrained and rendered helpless and abused in
any way he saw fit.
‘He’d carefully planned what he was going to do.’
On the night of the incident, joiner Hills had told his then-partner that he
was going to a casino with friends but instead drove his van to Highfields
where he targeted the victim, a vulnerable and slightly-built prostitute.
Having driven into the countryside, he dragged the woman into the back and
‘shackled’ her feet with ropes, and used two bungee-type ropes from the ceiling
to ‘string her up’.
Still with tape across her mouth, she was rendered completely helpless.
Hills then proceeded to raping the 24-year-old for six hours.
He eventually dropped her off in a city centre car park at 2.30am. Following
his arrest, he claimed she consented to sexual activity in the van.
Hills admitted kidnap and various sexual offences and Judge Sylvia De Bertodano
said he would only be freed when he was no longer considered a danger.
He also admitted eight counts of downloading child pornography, of
girls aged
between six and 15.
The offences related to 143 images at level one – the least serious – eight at
level two, 12 at level three and seven at level four, found on his computer, in
February 2011.
Gary Short, mitigating, said: ‘The indecent images show the level of his
preoccupation with sex.
‘What happened to the victim was the escalation of seeking personal sexual
gratification.’
