An international rugby player has been jailed for four-and-a-half years for raping a woman at her flat.
Ugandan winger Philip Pariyo, 32, played at the Commonwealth Games in 2014 – but claimed asylum in Britain with the claim that he was gay.
He went missing after the tournament and failed to return to Africa alleging he would be persecuted in Uganda for being homosexual.
But he later had a pregnant girlfriend living in Cardiff and went on to rape another woman.
A court heard Pariyo – who worked as a binman for Cardiff Council – repeatedly ‘badgered’ his victim for sex before forcing himself upon her in June 2021.
He then went with her to buy the morning-after pill the following day and asked to her buy condoms so they could have sex again.
Pariyo denied rape but was found guilty following a trial at Cardiff Crown Court.
In a victim impact statement, the woman said: ‘No one in the world should go through what I did, fighting and begging for my life. It has left lasting impacts on me, and has felt like an open wound that I can never heal from.
Ugandan winger Philip Pariyo, 32, played at the Commonwealth Games in 2014 – but claimed asylum in Britain with the claim that he was gay
He went missing after the tournament and failed to return to Africa alleging he would be persecuted in Uganda for being homosexual
But he later had a pregnant girlfriend living in Cardiff and went on to rape another woman
‘It’s made me feel dirty, numb and tainted. He invaded my body by force and branded me from within. He became an unwanted part of my body that I can’t get rid of.
‘No one should fight like their life depends on it for something as simple as consent.’
Judge Celia Hughes told him: ‘Someone with your physical strength and who played at such a high level in your sport should act as a role model to others. But instead you manhandled this woman as entirely as you wished.
‘You pleaded not guilty even though you admitted having sex in your text messages.
‘She will never be the same strong confident woman she was before she came to Cardiff to see you, because of your sexual greed.’
Pariyo disappeared after Commonwealth Games in 2014 before being found playing for a small rugby club in Wales.
He went missing after the closing ceremony in Glasgow, infuriating the Ugandan sports minister who vowed: ‘We shall find them and make sure they return home.’
After slipping away from his teammates, Pariyo, who played in the African nation’s Sevens team at the Games, eventually moved into a hotel that was housing asylum seekers.
The following February he was discovered playing for St Peter’s RFC in Cardiff.
The court heard his asylum status would be ‘adversely affected’ by his sentence.
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Ugandan rugby star who claimed asylum in Britain saying he was gay is jailed for raping woman in attack that left her ‘fighting and begging for my life’
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