Reynard Sinaga, an Indonesian student living in Manchester, having completed a first degree, a masters and was latterly a PhD student at Leeds university working on his thesis ‘Sexuality and everyday transnationalism – South Asian gay and bisexual men in Manchester‘, was unveiled this month as the most prolific sexual predator after assaulting as many as 159 men by targeting victims and it is believed, plying them with GHB.

Jailing him the judge called him a ‘monster’ who showed no remorse after he was convicted using 1500 hours of his own video footage of his abuse and image captures from his mobile phone.

Responding to the case, the Home Secretary Priti Patel called for an urgent review and said, “I’m deeply concerned by the use of illegal drugs like GHB to perpetrate these crimes and have asked the independent Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) to expedite a review looking at whether our controls for these drugs are tough enough.”

It is five years since serial killer Stephen Port used GHB and other drugs to knock out victims before raping them. He murdered four men at his flat in Barking, East London.

Many of Sinaga’s victims were unaware of having been sexually assaulted until they were approached by the police, with support from St Mary’s Sexual Assault Referral Centre in Manchester. The police and those providing support faced the moral dilemma of whether to contact those who had been assaulted and make them aware that was the case, with some then suffering from mental health issues and suicidal thoughts, or to not make contact but then be unable to prosecute for those offences. Whilst Sinaga will now spend a lengthy period in prison, those he assaulted will also have to spend their life dealing with the consequences of his criminal behaviour.

Written by Jagdeep Hayre at BLM
jagdeep.hayre@blmlaw.com