News, views and top stories in your inbox. Don't miss our must-read newsletter Sign up Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Invalid Email

A remorseless rapist claimed his trial was unfair - because his lawyer refused to make his traumatised victim cry in the witness box.

Illegal over-stayer Francis Kofi Okrah said his barrister went too easy on the woman he threatened to make pregnant, the Manchester Evening News reports.

He claimed barrister Nicholas Clarke should have cross-examined her hard enough to reduce her to tears.

But Appeal Court judges were so horrified by Okrah’s complaint they instead gave him an extra six weeks behind bars for wasting their time.

Okrah, 36, of Brook Avenue, Levenshulme, was jailed for seven years at Manchester Crown Court on November 4, 2013.

He was convicted of raping the woman after luring her to his flat on the pretext of helping her re-charge her phone, Judge Sarah Munro QC said.

She ended up on her own after a night out in Manchester in 2010 and was at the train station at 2.30am.

Her mobile phone battery had run out, so she was isolated from her friends, when she met Okrah by chance.

He invited her back to his then home in Beswick to charge her phone and, having been drinking, she ‘naively’ agreed.

She told Okrah she was a lesbian and not interested in him but, after falling asleep on his bed, she woke up to find him raping her.

(Image: MEN)

Despite screaming at him to stop, he carried on regardless, telling her ‘he wanted to make her pregnant’.

Swabs were taken from the victim, but a DNA match to Okrah was not made until 2013 when he was arrested for something else.

He told jurors the woman had consented but was disbelieved.

Challenging his conviction, Okrah said Mr Clarke had been too soft on the woman after she described her ordeal to the jury.

He argued the barrister was wrong when he ‘refused to cross-examine the complainant so as to make her cry’.

The Ghanaian national also claimed the jury should not have been told about her sexual orientation or his immigration status.

He even complained that Mr Clarke’s closing speech to the jury was ‘ill-advised and inappropriate’.

But Judge Munro told him: “No point you raise renders the decision of the jury arguably unsafe.”

She said Okrah’s barrister was simply ‘not entitled to cross-examine a victim for the purpose of making her cry’.

The jury was fully entitled to know the victim was a lesbian and to be told of Okrah’s status as an illegal over-stayer, she added.

And Mr Clarke’s closing speech was ‘carefully crafted and delivered’, she concluded.

Judge Munro, who was sitting with Lord Justice Simon and Mr Justice Hickinbottom, dismissed the appeal.

Condemning Okrah’s challenge as ‘wholly without merit’, she ordered him to serve an extra 42 days in jail for wasting judicial time.