A man who fled to Romania before he was due to stand trial for repeatedly raping a 13-year-old girl was recaptured as he tried to catch a flight from Bucharest airport.
And after being brought back to this country Bogdan Bernavic, who had been tried and convicted in his absence of two charges of rape, was jailed for 18 years for those offences.
Bernavic (25) of Old Church Road, Coventry, at the time, was given a consecutive six-month sentence for failing to answer to his bail for his trial in January, and ordered to register as a sex offender for life.
The trial took place without him or Adi-Cosmin Scripcariu (20) of Churchill Avenue, Coventry, who had also failed to attend, and with just a third defendant, Wilson Surugiu (19) of Clay Lane, Coventry, in the dock.
Prosecutor Cathlyn Orchard had said that in 2015 Social Services agreed for a 13-year-old girl to stay with a couple in Coventry after she had been thrown out by her father.
“During that time she encountered the three defendants, who are cousins. The sexual abuse started one night after she had got to know Adi Scripcariu, and she was invited to a shisha lounge with Scripcariu and his younger cousin Wilson Surugiu.
“Later on, Bernavic arrived and asked her if she wanted to go with them to a park. Being very young and naïve, she didn’t think anything about it and went along with them.”
They drove to a park near the canal basin where Bernavic and Surugiu got out, and she had sex with Scripcariu, although the jury was unable to reach a verdict on whether he had raped her.
The other two then came back, and Bernavic got into the car and drove off with her, leaving the other two behind.
“He started kissing her and said he wanted to have sex with her. She said no, but he ignored her and raped her.”
After that Bernavic began demanding sex on a regular basis – even picking her up for sex in the morning before she went to school, and taking her off for sex after school as well.
The naïve 13-year-old began to like the attention he gave her, even though it was an abusive relationship in which he even threatened to break every bone in her body and dump her in a field if she did not do what he wanted.
She found it easier to go along with his demands than to risk angering him by saying no, said Miss Orchard, who told the jury the first rape charge related to the first occasion, while the other reflected his repeated rape of her after that.
The girl also had sex with Surugiu at his home, after it was said he had pestered her to do so – but he said he believed she was 16, and was cleared of sexual activity with a child.
Eventually, after reading a book which described sexual exploitation of a young girl, she told her teachers and foster parents what had been going on, and the three were arrested.
A European arrest warrant had been issued for Bernavic, and following its execution, Judge Anthony Potter explained: “Having been in Romania, he was arrested at Bucharest airport attempting to go to another country, Spain.
“He had left this country on the day he had been due in court for a pre-trial hearing.”
Katie Fox, defending, said Bernavic wanted an adjournment to change his legal representation because he was not happy about the way she had conducted his trial.
But that was rejected by the judge, who said: “How can he possibly know about the adequacy of representation he received and the way you conducted his defence when he’d deliberately absented himself? He’s acting in a vacuum of ignorance.”
And he said the interests of justice were that the case go ahead, especially since it was the second time his victim had attended expecting to see him sentenced.
The teenager told the court: “The first time I ever tried drugs was with Bogdan, and that was cocaine, and it led me onto other drugs, and I would find myself in dangerous positions.
“My education suffered severely, I lost my motivation and self-respect. It has left me self-harming, and I have considered suicide. I have been diagnosed with PTSD.”
Miss Fox submitted that Bernavic had not used drugs to facilitate the offences, which she suggested had taken place over a period of three weeks, because he was already having sex with the girl before introducing her to the drug.
Jailing Bernavic, Judge Potter told him: “I am satisfied you were deliberately looking for young vulnerable females to use for your own sexual gratification.
“It would have been obvious to you just how vulnerable she was. I am satisfied you cynically exploited that.
“On the first occasion you and others fed her so much vodka she was paralytic. You ignored her protests that she had already had sex that night with someone to whom she had lost her virginity.
“Thereafter, she was someone you treated like a chattel. She was just someone to be used and abused by you.
“You introduced her to class A drugs, giving her four lines of cocaine on one occasion, and you raped her after that. Since then, she was taking drugs to dull the pain you and others had caused her.”
