A convicted Polish rapist who came to the UK using fake identity papers has been jailed for life for the “sadistic” rape and false imprisonment of two women.
Rafal Bargiel, 40, met the women separately after posing as a “sugar daddy” on a dating site and luring them into a night out for what he claimed was consensual sex.
When he met them he tied them up, raped them numerous times and subjected them to degrading and humiliating sex acts, which he filmed, Judge Andrew Bright said during sentencing on Friday.
Bright said the victims, both Polish, would probably suffer psychological trauma “until the day they die”.
He told Bargiel: “Having heard their evidence I am in no doubt they were, at times, in fear of losing their lives.”
Bright said he accepted it was never the defendant’s intention to kill either of the women but said causing them fear heightened his sense of sexual gratification.
An experienced police officer described the case as one of the worst he had worked on. The court heard that Bargiel, who adopted the name of Tomasz Puchalski, had been convicted in Poland of a “strikingly similar offence” in November 2011 but was sentenced to what Bright described as an “extraordinarily lenient” prison term of just two and a half years.
On his release he adopted his new ID and came to the UK under the false name.
The judge said Bargiel, who sat emotionless in the dock, “posed a very high risk to women” and noted he was on bail for the first offence when he committed the second.
The fact his previous criminal record was not picked up before the first rape in the UK will raise questions about what the authorities knew about him when he entered the country.
Dr Philip Joseph, a forensic psychiatrist, said he was worried the defendant “doesn’t accept he has a sexual problem and believes, if only he can find a like-minded woman who wishes to be dominated, there would be no problem.”
The court heard that Bargiel suffered from sadism disorder and wanted treatment.
Joseph said he was concerned there was an “escalation in the dominance” in each offence and was “pessimistic” about whether the defendant would respond to a sexual offenders’ treatment programme while in prison because “he would engage in intellectual argument”.
A highly educated man, Bargiel had a biology degree in Poland before starting a PhD in the US.
At St Albans crown court, the prosecutor, Simon Ash, said: “The defendant told the women he was doing what he was doing to teach a lesson to women like them.”
In the first attack he raped a 19-year-old in his Jaguar car after driving her into a field near Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, late at night.
The woman said that after finding herself trapped in the car with Bargiel, he filmed her on a small camera as he made her perform sex acts on him. When she asked if she could have a cigarette, he told her: “Maybe it’s going to be your last cigarette in your life.”
He was arrested following the attack and, after being charged, was released on bail. Five months later, while still on bail, he raped another young woman in a hotel room after making contact through an internet dating site.
She told the court she had hoped to meet a “nice guy” and that he took her to a hotel near Cheshunt, Hertfordshire, where she thought they would have a meal. Instead, she said he took her to a room, ordered her to strip, tied her up and then took out a knife and forced her to have sex.
Bargiel had been convicted in Poland of raping a young woman he met through an internet dating site , after driving her to a secluded spot.
The following year Bargiel travelled to the UK and got work as a lorry driver, living for a time in Waltham Cross, Hertfordshire.
By November 2014 he was homeless and living in his car on the outskirts of north London.
