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Student Jailed for Sexual Assault in Campus Attack That Echoes Brock Turner

Edinburgh University undergraduate Felix Beck left an 18-year-old woman bleeding after he choked her and bit her all over her thighs and genitals.
The Aberdeen High Court, where Felix Beck was convicted of sexual assault.
Aberdeen High Court. Photo via Wikipedia

An undergraduate student at a Scottish university has been jailed for sexual assault in a case that has been compared to the infamous Brock Turner rape trial in California.

Twenty-two-year-old Edinburgh University student Felix Beck was given a three-year sentence by the High Court in Aberdeen after being found guilty of sexual assault by a jury. He was also cleared of two separate charges of rape committed prior to the assault on another woman.

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The Telegraph reports that Beck left an 18-year-old woman bruised and bleeding after they met on Tinder and went back to her dorm room. The assault happened weeks after Beck had been questioned by police about a rape allegation made by another woman.

The victim told the court that she had initially asked Beck to "take charge" as she was nervous and sexually inexperienced. Instead, Beck choked her, dug his fingers forcibly into her neck and penetrated her with his fingers. He also bit her repeatedly on her thighs and genitals, despite her pleas for him to stop.

After the assault, Beck sent the woman a message that said that he "wouldn’t have become aggressive if she hadn’t given him a shit blow job,” the court heard. The victim told a lecturer that she had been strangled and forced to perform a sex act against her will when they saw the bruises around her neck.

Beck claimed that the victim had asked him to spank and choke her. His lawyers asked the court to impose a non-custodial community payback order on Beck, and claimed he suffered from sex addiction.

One post describing Beck on a student website make jokey references to the “slags” he’d had sex with. “Daddy's credit card is certainly loyal. In terms of a slag leader board, we have clear winner," it read. He was also described as the "maddest fresher [freshman]" in the university and someone who was always found with "with a bottle of Moet in each hand."

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Beck's victim was so traumatized following the October 2016 attack that she had to leave and take up her studies at another university. She later developed depression and was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.


Watch: Amy Ziering On Campus Rape and Why No One Believes Women

In sentencing, judge Lord Uist described Beck as a privileged abuser who felt entitled to behave with impunity. "The way you treated your victim both during and after your violent attack was callous and disgraceful. You come from a comfortable, indeed privileged, background and are in the fourth year of your studies,” he said. "You have only yourself to blame for the situation in which you now find yourself, which arises out of the lifestyle you were leading and your sense of sexual entitlement and arrogance."

Grazia magazine described Beck's case as "strikingly similar" to the assault carried out by Stanford University swimmer Brock Turner. Both attacks occurred on college campuses and involved young men who "tried to use [their] privilege to worm [their] way out of a sexual assault charge."

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The Sun reports that Edinburgh University officials had allowed Beck to continue his studies during the trial, and that he had a graduate job lined up for him if he avoided jail. That will no longer be the case: Beck sobbed in court as he was jailed for assault late last week.