ST JOHN’S, Antigua, Tuesday July 16, 2019 – A former British police officer has been sentenced to 15 years in prison for raping a young woman when the two met on vacation in Antigua just over four years ago.
Lee Martin-Cramp, who was a member of the UK Metropolitan Police Force, will be incarcerated at the former US Naval Base on the island, in keeping with the agreement between local and UK authorities.
According to the evidence in the trial, Martin-Cramp raped the 22-year-old woman, a foreign student nurse, during his vacation in May 2015.
The two had met on dating app Tinder and went to a bar before going to her apartment where they chatted and drank wine before deciding to watch a movie. According to the evidence, the then 22-year-old police officer spiked the woman’s drink when she left the room to change her clothes.
The woman had told the court she noticed the wine had a strange taste when she returned, but Martin-Cramp told her he had added some vodka to it, so she took a few more sips. She said she subsequently started feeling dizzy and stopped drinking, but Martin-Cramp forced himself on her and she woke up later bruised and in pain.
The woman said she maintained WhatsApp contact with her rapist after the incident so she could eventually get him to admit to the crime. And he did, telling her to pretend it never happened, and she reported it to police.
In one of the messages, after the woman told him he had taken her virginity, Martin-Cramp replied: “I can’t give it back haha”.
Martin-Cramp was extradited from the UK to Antigua and Barbuda last September to face the courts for the crime, and after a seven-day trial two months ago, he was convicted.
Following his conviction, he was dismissed from the Metropolitan Police which he joined the year before the rape. He had been posted to the Wanted Offenders Unit in Wimbledon, South East London before his arrest.
