A British
soldier has been jailed for nine years for drunkenly raping a
six-year-old girl in her bedroom while stationed on an adventure course
with his unit. Craig
Stormey, 30, was on an alpine skiing course with the 7th Parachute
Regiment Royal Horse Artillery in the Stubai Valley, Austria, when the
horrific assault took place.
Today
Judge Norbert Hofer said it was 'impossible' to find an appropriate
punishment given the severity of the attack and ranked it among the
'worst kind of abuse of a child's physical well-being'.
The court at
Innsbruck, in the province of Tyrol, heard that the attack took place in
November 2014 when the Afghanistan veteran drunkenly entered an
unlocked house, stripped off and started to perform sexual acts on the
sleeping child.
The girl's father told the court: 'I was lying in my bed and saw a figure holding a child in his arms.
'I was half asleep and first thought it was my wife but then I realised she was lying next to me.
'Then I saw the naked stranger in another room with my daughter. I completely flipped and hit him several times in the face.'
During the fight, his wife and their daughter fled the house as he called the police.
He added: 'Our daughter has managed to cope with the incident relatively well. But she has a very good memory.'
The
defendant, who was in Tyrol on an 'Adventure Camp' with his unit, said
that he had 'quite a few' drinks with his friends but could not remember
why he left the pub they were drinking in or why he entered the house.
He
said: 'There is no explanation for what I did, and there is also no
excuse. All I can remember is fighting inside a house with a man, and a
woman who held a child in her arms.'
He
told the court he had suffered from PTSD having fought in war zones and
had seen severe sexual assaults among soldiers on the battlefield. He
also apologised to the girl and her parents.
Police arrested the accused in the house and since then he had been in detention in Innsbruck prison while awaiting trial.
Medical investigators examined the little girl and backed her claims of the events.
Judge Norbert Hofer said that the defendant 'had made sexual actions that can hardly be topped.'
Psychiatrist
Reinhard Haller said that Mr Stormy had signs of a post-traumatic
stress disorder from tours in Afghanistan but certified him as legally
sane.
Dr
Haller had previously worked on the case of Natascha Kampusch, the
Austrian woman who was kidnapped at the age of ten and held captive for
eights before escaping.
Laszlo Szabo, Mr Stormey's lawyer, said: 'The combination of alcohol and his trauma played a major role.
'In spite of this, he had shown no such inclinations for all his life and therefore his actions remain inexplicable.'
Mr Szabo was planning to appeal the sentence.
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