A Kendal woman has become the fourth person to be jailed for involvement in the imprisonment of a man who was tortured over many hours at a town flat.
Carlisle Crown Court heard the victim, a man in his 30s, was found battered and bleeding outside a Sports Direct store on Sandes Avenue on the afternoon of Wednesday June 2 last year.
He had been attacked while tied up in the bath after going to the Kendal property at around 1am. The victim took drugs with others in the flat, and was involved in pranks as he tried to shave the hair of another male who had a cigarette paper placed on an eyebrow which was set alight.
Prosecutor David Traynor said his next recollection was waking up the following morning, naked and tied up in a bath, his feet manacled to taps.
For several hours the man was kept in that position and attacked. He remembered numerous punches, said Mr Traynor, was struck repeatedly with a metal bar, slashed with a knife to his back, thighs and penis, and burned with a blow torch on his back and hair.
Tape was found wrapped around his neck while some form of hood was believed to have been placed over his head. He was eventually untied, went outside and collapsed.
Members of the public and the emergency services went to his aid. Drifting in and out of consciousness, he was airlifted to the Royal Preston Hospital although fortunately, said the prosecutor, “his injuries were not found to require any significant intervention”.
But in an impact statement, he told how the torture felt like it was going on forever and he continued to suffer from significant psychological distress.
Parts of the attack were filmed with some of the footage circulated on instant messaging app Snapchat.
One of four people to admit falsely imprisoning the man, 24-year-old Rhiannon Stewart, was heard making comments on the footage. “Notwithstanding she doesn’t use any violence,” said Mr Traynor. “The Crown say she is a willing participant.”
The three other people involved — John Calvert, his brother Christopher Calvert and the teen, Dominic Hodgson — were locked up at the crown court last month.
Stewart, of Lound Road, Kendal, was sentenced today for imprisonment, and for separate offences of conveying drugs, phones and charger cables into a prison — under coercion and pressure; and assaulting an emergency worker.
Claire Brocklebank, defending, said: “She is remorseful for her involvement in these offences.”
Judge Nicholas Barker learned Stewart was pregnant with her first child, due in November, and considered a raft of background reports about her; but noted she had accepted encouraging and promoting the torture victim’s ordeal.
“I consider this incident to be a serious incident of false imprisonment,” said Judge Barker, as he jailed Stewart for 52 months. “This is degrading, humiliating, sadistic behaviour that is on the verge of being torture.”
