Rape victim 'says her face was paralysed' after attack by Australian cricketer
The woman raped by Australian cricketer Alex Hepburn says her face was left paralysed from the trauma of the attack, The Sunday Mirror reports.
Hepburn, 23, was found guilty in the UK of raping the unnamed woman as she slept, during the first night of a sexual conquest competition he helped set up on a WhatsApp group.
The Worcester Crown Court heard the woman wrongly thought she was having sex with Hepburn’s then teammate Joe Clarke at the players’ Worcester unit.
The university graduate told jurors she had earlier had consensual sex with England Lions batsman Clarke, who later passed out in the bathroom, leaving her asleep in the bedroom.
The 23-year-old victim told The Sunday Mirror how the attack caused her body to “shut down” and her face became paralysed, which doctors feared to be a stroke, The Sunday Mirror reported.
The woman reportedly said doctors told her she had a stress-induced condition called Bell’s Palsy, that temporarily paralyses facial muscles.
“They said after everything I’d been through my body was shutting down,” she told the news outlet.
“As the day went on my eye drooped and the side of my face froze. It took months to go back to normal.
“I had to drink through a straw. It stopped me working. I didn’t want to leave home.”
She described how the attack left her with PTSD, and she now suffers crippling panic attacks.
A jury last month found the former Worcestershire county all-rounder guilty of oral rape following a night out in April 2017, but cleared him of a further count of rape relating to the same victim.
Hepburn is now trying to appeal his conviction.
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