In the year 2022, Joshua Victorin, the London Rapist sex offender who assaulted six lone women, received a life sentence. Joshua Victorin, 25, executed four assaults over a span of four hours, approaching his victims from behind. The actions committed between 23 December and 4 January occurred shortly after his release from incarceration, where he had been serving a sentence for three sexual assaults and further crimes. At Inner London Crown Court, he was sentenced to a minimum of eight years and eight months of incarceration. Victorin admitted guilt to two counts of attempted rape and four charges of sexual assault.
Joshua Victorin, who was living in a probation hostel in Walworth, disguised himself in dark clothing, a hooded top and a face mask to carry out the attacks across south London. At an earlier hearing, prosecutor Claire Harden-Frost said: “These offences can be seen as part of a campaign to rape and sexually assault women walking alone in the streets of London. “This, frankly, is most people’s nightmare in this situation.” Victorin first struck on the evening of 23 December, when he followed a woman as she got off a bus in Peckham. He pulled down her jogging bottoms, causing her to fall to the floor, before fleeing when the woman’s screams alerted a passerby.
On New Year’s Eve, he tried to rape a second woman in Elephant and Castle, pulling down her trousers and dragging her by her ankles to the doorway of a London South Bank University building, but was disturbed by a security guard who heard her “hysterical” screams. On 4 January, Joshua Victorin carried out four similar sexual assaults on separate women, between 11:00 and 14:15 GMT. One victim described how he was “panting” as he grabbed her hips, while another was said to be so distressed she was “hyperventilating” when he groped her thighs.
Joshua Victorin was identified after detectives theorised the attacker might be on some kind of curfew because of the timing of the offences and tracked him down to his hostel. He has seven previous convictions for 14 offences dating back to 2014. While serving a sentence for unlawful wounding and possession of an offensive weapon, he sexually assaulted two prison guards and was jailed for a year, having also sexually assaulted a female police officer in March last year.
He was released halfway through his sentence in August, but recalled to prison after being charged with possession of cannabis and outraging public decency – by having consensual sex in a park in front of people, including children – and was then freed under licence in December. Stephen Akinsanya, defending, said his client’s “indication of remorse is genuine”. Describing Joshua Victorin as a “prolific offender”, Metropolitan Police Det Sgt Chloe Angris said: “It is possible that there might be other women who were assaulted by him, and I would urge them to contact us.”
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