Truanting from school can be short-lived mischief. It can also damage a child's education irreparably. But in the case of two young boys playing hooky in Manchester city centre - it left them scarred for life.
19.10.2023 - 16:33 / manchestereveningnews.co.uk
Two men have been found guilty of rape after a sobbing woman was attacked in Piccadilly Gardens. Brian Jalo, 25, Juan Quinones, 24, both raped the woman, who had travelled to the city with a friend for a weekend shopping trip.
Manchester Crown Court heard the woman was attacked in an alleyway near the Gardens. She had met Jalo and Quinones in the city centre the day before, and had exchanged Instagram details with Jalo. The following day, the friends spent the afternoon shopping and drinking in the city centre.
At about 8pm she made her way into Piccadilly Gardens alone after having an argument with her friend. She later came to meet Jalo and Quinones.
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The men were captured on CCTV in the alleyway. Prosecutors said the pair had 'formed the intention' to get the 'intoxicated' woman 'alone in that state'. Jalo and Quinones both raped her in the alleyway.
"She tells the police that she was crying and saying no," prosecutor Robert Wyn Jones said. The attack lasted six minutes, and after the defendants were said to 'greet each other with fist-bumps'. The victim was 'visibly distressed and dishevelled' and 'unsteady on her feet'.
She went back to the hotel and told her friend that she'd been raped. She gave evidence in court and after it was suggested that she'd been a 'willing participant', the woman told jurors: "I asked them repeatedly to stop."
Jalo and Quinones both claimed the woman had consented to sex. Giving evidence through a Spanish interpreter, Quinones claimed the woman had been 'smiling' and 'laughing out loud'
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