{"id":319207,"date":"2025-12-16T14:45:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-16T14:45:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/319207\/"},"modified":"2025-12-16T14:45:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-16T14:45:09","slug":"former-student-given-life-sentence-for-sex-attacks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/319207\/","title":{"rendered":"Former student given life sentence for sex attacks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The High Court in Edinburgh was told that Ekpe, a former biomedicine student at Heriot-Watt University, sexually assaulted his first victim in 2022 at a flat in Grangemouth.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The woman was asleep, intoxicated and incapable of consenting when he assaulted her.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The court was told he struck again later that year when he raped a sleeping woman in Edinburgh.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Ekpe was on four separate bail orders when he committed his final attack in Cumbernauld in 2023. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The court heard he repeatedly tried to kiss the woman, seized her body and touched her breast.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">She was able to escape and ran through woods into the path of a car which stopped to help her.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Judge McFadyen made non-harassment orders prohibiting Ekpe from contacting or attempting to contact his victims, and also placed him on the sex offenders register indefinitely.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Following the sentencing, Det Insp Gordon Couper said: &#8220;Ekpe is a dangerous, violent man who subjected these women to horrendous ordeals and deserves to face justice for his actions.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I would like to commend the women for their strength throughout the legal process, and I hope this conclusion will help them as they move forward with their lives.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The High Court in Edinburgh was told that Ekpe, a former biomedicine student at Heriot-Watt University, sexually assaulted&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":319208,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-319207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=319207"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319207\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/319208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=319207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=319207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=319207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}