Taxi Driver Online

Well the jury reached their verdict in 15 minutes, but some pretty odd details in this story


Takeaway sex beast kidnap horror as woman conned into thinking driver was Uber

https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scot ... r-26294710

Abdul Samad, 39, assaulted his victim repeatedly as he casually drove his hot food delivery route after convincing her he was a private hire driver.


Image: Daily Record

A young woman has told how a takeaway delivery driver subjected her to a horrific sexual attack after conning her into believing he was her Uber driver.

Predator Abdul Samad snatched his chance to prey on the 20-year-old as she waited for her cab in a lonely Glasgow street at 5am.

Samad, 39, assaulted her repeatedly as he casually drove his hot food delivery route after convincing his victim he was a private hire driver.

He was found guilty at Glasgow Sheriff Court of sexually assaulting the woman but failed to appear for the verdict or sentencing and a warrant has now been issued for his arrest.

The victim had been drinking with her friends in Glasgow before going to a pal’s flat just after 3am on the south side of the city.

At 5am, her friend called an Uber as the victim’s phone was out of battery and she walked to nearby Wallace Street to be picked up.

Within minutes a silver Nissan Primera across the road spotted her and slowed down so she waved, assuming it was her Uber.

The driver, Samad, crossed to stop in front of her and she approached the driver’s window.

The girl said: “The car slowed down, so I wrongly identified it as my taxi. I told him where I was going and he said he could take me.”

The victim said she got in the front seat because it made her feel more in control.

She said there was a Just Eat delivery bag and a child carrier in the back seat of married father of two Samad’s car.

But as soon as she got in, Samad sped on to the nearby M74 on-ramp heading east, the opposite direction to her parents’ home.

She said: “Before we even reached the motorway he started acting inappropriately. He asked whether I had any undergarments on and touched my leg.

“He told me to relax and stop crying, multiple times.”

As they sped along the M74, Samad grabbed her hand and thrust it down his trousers.

He then continued to sexually assault her in a prolonged ordeal.

She said: “He alternated doing that all the way on the motorway. I felt too scared to stop him. He was so much bigger than me. I tried to ignore him and just stared out the window. I was crying the whole time.”

Ten minutes before Samad picked her up, he was captured laughing on CCTV collecting an order from
takeaway the Guru Grill in the city’s Oswald street.

To make the delivery, he took junction 2A off the M74 at Tollcross and headed along London Road and stopped outside his customer’s house while his victim was too petrified to move.

He even returned to his car to retrieve a money bag while waiting for his customer, claiming he feared his victim might steal it.

The young woman said that she was “frozen” by fear and didn’t dare to escape or scream while Samad did his delivery. She said: “I was so far from home. I was frozen by what had happened. I was too scared.

“I just wasn’t sure what this man was capable of.”

Samad’s shift was finishing, so when he returned to the car, he told the weeping girl he would take her home.

Now heading on the M74 west, Samad continued the sexual assault.

It was almost 6am when he dropped her off near her west end home. Once through the door, she changed into her pyjamas and ran into her dad’s bedroom.

Giving evidence, her father said: “She was crying, ‘Oh daddy’. She hadn’t called me daddy since she
was a child. I knew something was seriously wrong.”

Hysterical, she told her dad she had been sexually assaulted and he immediately called the police.

After a 10-day investigation, police officers had to force entry to Samad’s house to arrest him when he refused to answer the door.

Samad initially claimed nothing had happened in the car until it emerged his DNA was on the girl’s clothes and the twisted predator then claimed she had forced his hand on her and touched him against his will.

Speaking about her ordeal, the victim said: “When you go through something as traumatic as that, you can never forget what’s been done to you.

“You try to forget the face behind it. I did everything in my power to try and get that man out of my head.”

The girl, now 23, said that the experience was so traumatic she was placed on antidepressants and developed an eating disorder.

Despite the weight of evidence against him, Samad, 39, had pled not guilty to the charges.

Procurator Fiscal Depute Mark Allan asked him: “You were a man in his late thirties and your position is that a 20-year-old stranger at the end of her night, desperate to get home, couldn’t keep her hands off you? Are you seriously asking us to believe that position?”

Samad said “yes”, claiming he thought her behaviour was perhaps considered “culturally” acceptable.

It took a jury of nine men and six women 15 minutes to find Samad guilty.

Although he was carrying a Just Eat bag and the Guru Grill restaurant is registered with the food delivery company’s app, Just Eat insisted that Samad was not on their list of registered delivery drivers.

A spokesman for Just Eat said the company did not have anyone with Samad’s name listed as a driver and could not establish if he was doing a delivery through its app on the night of the attack.

She said: “Carrying a Just Eat bag is not evidence of somebody delivering on behalf of Just Eat – because many self employed couriers often deliver for multiple apps.”

For what it's worth, a different version of the case with a slightly more sober headline. And a bit of the evidence that isn't covered above.


Bogus taxi driver found guilty of sexually assaulting woman

https://news.stv.tv/west-central/bogus- ... ting-woman

Abdul Samad, 39, preyed on the 20-year-old from the journey in Glasgow's Tradeston to her home in the west end.

A takeaway delivery driver sexually assaulted a vulnerable woman after duping her into thinking he was a cabbie.

Abdul Samad, 39, preyed on the 20-year-old from the journey in Glasgow’s Tradeston to her home in the west end.

Samad pretended to be a taxi driver before picking up the girl and then dropping off food en-route on July 24, 2019.

He repeatedly groped her under her clothing, touched her on the leg and repeatedly performed a sex act on her during the journey as well as on the M74.

On Tuesday, Samad was found guilty by a jury at Glasgow Sheriff Court to sexually assaulting the woman.

He was not in the dock for the verdict and a warrant was issued for his arrest.

The court witnessed CCTV of Samad crossing three lanes in order to pick up the victim in the early hours of the morning.

Samad, of the city’s Castlemilk, claimed he told the girl to get into the car as she needed help.

Prosecutor Mark Allan said to him: “What if I say you were chancing your arm wanting her to believe your car was a taxi?”

He replied: “Not at all.”

Samad also believed that he was being a “good Samaritan” at the time.

He claimed that the pair said nothing to each other before she put his hand on her own on the gearstick.

Samad further claimed that it was the woman who groped him and that he was the victim of a sexual assault.

He stated that it was a culture difference which stopped him telling her it was wrong.

Samad initially dropped off food to a house in the city’s east end before going back on the motorway towards the west.

Mr Allan asked: “The woman said that you had your hand under her clothing and touched her, would you say she was lying?”

He replied: “Yes.”

The prosecutor followed up: “When she told the jury that you got her hand to perform a sex act on you, she is lying?”

Samad again stated: “Yes.”

Mr Allan said: “Why on earth would this stranger tell these evil lies about a man who did nothing to her, about a man who had simply tried to help her?”

Samad responded: “I’m still standing here surprised, you can ask her, I really don’t know what her aim was or what was going on in her mind.”

It was revealed that Samad had changed his position from having any physical contact with the victim after forensic evidence revealed the contrary.

Kevin Corr, defending, asked: “The woman stated that you inquired about her undergarment and you asked why she was not wearing a bra?”

Samad replied: “No.”

He also refuted that he asked the woman if she had a condom on her.

Samad claimed that when he dropped the victim off, she called him a “life-saver” and an “angel”.

It was revealed that Samad has a previous conviction for an assault to injury in 2009 in which he received a fine.

Sentence was deferred pending background reports by sheriff Sean Murphy QC.

This is an opinion piece by the author of the first report above, and is critical of some of the cross-examination, which obviously is sort of the norm for this kind of stuff. But it's all tied in with the proposal up here to get rid of jury trials for this kind of case. Could say a bit more, but probably best not to


Rape myths must not deprive any woman of justice

https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scot ... e-26303866

Record columnist Annie Brown says rape myths are still prevalent among juries.

At a court last week, a young victim of sexual assault finally appeared on the witness stand two years and seven months after she was attacked.

Hot food delivery driver Abdul Samad subjected the 20-year-old to a sustained sexual attack after misleading her into thinking he was her Uber.

He picked her up in a Glasgow street at 5am and repeatedly assaulted her as he casually drove his delivery route in July 2019.

He was found guilty of the attack but the night before he was due to appear in court, the bailed predator went on the run.

His victim had waited years for Samad to face justice but he has thus far evaded it.

So, why was he given bail?

After the attack, the young woman he attacked had to be prescribed antidepressants and sleeping tablets. She developed an eating disorder, which she had fought to get under control but it was re-triggered by the trauma of the court case.

The wait for the trial must have felt like an eternity. It was postponed multiple times and long before the Covid court backlog such cases were already taking years to be heard.

Little wonder so many victims are dropping out of court cases and deciding no justice is less painful than the agonising wait.

The questioning she had to endure under cross-examination on the witness stand was distressing to watch.

So, she had gone out at 7pm with friends in Glasgow’s west end, then on to a club and waited until it closed before she left? Then she went to a friend’s home and didn’t leave until 5am?

What was she drinking? Were those single vodka and cokes or doubles? Why did she go into a lonely street to pick up a taxi when her phone was flat?

Why when Samad dropped food off did she not scream or escape? There was no mention of the fact that victims often freeze.

The defence told her she was drunk that night, that when she was in the car with Samad she was so intoxicated, so erratic she sexually assaulted him.

So this victim had to protest she hadn’t sexually assaulted an overweight, middle-aged stranger within seconds of getting in his car.

She told the defence she had stopped drinking in the club at 1.45am, that she had walked into a lonely street with a flat phone in the early hours because she was panicking her parents would worry and she had work at 9am.

At every turn, this victim had to justify herself. She did not say she had every right to walk where she wanted and when, without the expectation she would be sexually assaulted.

Samad’s defence team were doing their job within a flawed system where it is effective to attempt to impugn the credibility of a victim in front of a jury.

In a recent government survey, a third of people said they believed a woman is at least partly to blame for being raped if she is drunk.

Rape myths are still prevalent among juries.

This 20-year-old was out having fun but was being painted as less worthy because she was drinking, out late, alone in a dark street and didn’t fight off her attacker.

The procurator fiscal asked how a victim should behave. Should she have “commando-rolled” out of the car?

A cross-justice review chaired by our second most senior judge, Lady Dorrian, is right to have recommended a specialist court for the most serious sexual offences, using trauma-informed procedures.

As long as rape myths prevail among juries we must also seriously consider judge-only trials for rape and sexual assault.

We must improve the experience of victims in the court system without compromising the rights of the accused.

It is not acceptable in a modern Scotland that women continue to be painted not as victims of sexual predators but of their own behaviour.

Even if you accept that the victim was frozen, and to that extent couldn't get out of the car when the driver was making the delivery, nothing to suggest she needed to 'commando-roll' out of the car. So to that extent such a question is as nonsensical as some of the cross-examination.

Interesting some of the language used in the pieces, too. For a kick off, the headline right at the top uses the word 'kidnap', but nothing in the reports to suggest that or a similar offence was one of the charges.

The article also uses the word 'girl' to refer to the victim, despite being 20-23 years-old.

Image if the term 'girl' had been used in a report about a 23-year-old woman standing for parliament, say.

Really should have taken longer than that. Gives the impression they didn't consider the evidence as thoroughly as they should have.

_________________
IDFIMH

Think the first quote answers the question in the second quote.

_________________
IDFIMH

There are a number of options available to a court to help witnesses, such as the lady, give their evidence.

Screens that screen the witness from the defendant are used frequently, but also witnesses can give their evidence via a video link from another room.

_________________
IDFIMH

Nobody in court has to justify themselves, they just have to give their account of events as best they can.

Only thick journalists would say otherwise.

_________________
IDFIMH

Although there's quite a lot of detail about what happened in the car in today's article, there's nothing about what really happened regarding the booking and pickup, as portrayed above, nor the specific mention of the U-word in the 2022 version above. Today's article uses the word 'taxi' several times, and the closest it gets to the above is 'private hire taxi driver'.