Two teenagers will be sentenced by a judge in February after they were convicted of raping a 15-year-old schoolgirl in an Appleby alleyway.
Levi Stephen Lee and Othie Danny Lee, who are now aged 18, were just 14 and 15 respectively, when they visited the town ahead of the annual horse fair in late May 2019.
In an interview with police played at Carlisle Crown Court, the girl recalled that Lee and Lee — who are cousins — asked her repeatedly if she wanted to go for a walk just minutes after they had met.
After she replied “I don’t know”, one grabbed her wrist before leading her over the town’s main bridge. “I was nervous because I didn’t know what was going to happen next,” she had said.
The girl said she was then subjected to oral rapes in an alleyway by the two young strangers who, the court heard, told her: “Do it.”
The girl told one of the teens who had asked her for sex that she didn’t want to do that either, before returning to a friend. “I was scared and shaking,” she told
police.
Levi Lee and Othie Lee — who had travelled to Appleby from the Midlands with relatives for the fair — were detained by officers after the incident was reported.
Each denied one charge of rape and at the crown court went on trial over several weeks in front of a jury.
After hearing evidence, the jury found the teenagers guilty after deliberating for more than 10 hours.
Levi Lee, of Willenhall Lane, Walsall, and Othie Lee, of New Street, Bridgtown, Cannock, were remanded in custody by the trial judge, His Honour Ian Unsworth KC.
They are due to be sentenced on February 17.
- Legal restrictions which prevented the names of the defendants being reported because of their age ceased after they each turned 18 years old earlier this year.
