A man has claimed his penis is so small he cannot be guilty of raping a woman who reports she was attacked in a dark East London alleyway. Hossein Mohmoudi, 34, is on trial at Snaresbrook Crown Court accused of penetrating a woman in Stratford in December 2024 as she returned home after a drunken Christmas party. Mr Mohmoudi, of Booth House, on Whitechapel Road, denies the charge.
The woman, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, left the party in a taxi at around 12am, but got out to be sick then made her way to Stratford on a bus. On Stratford Broadway some time before 1:00am, she reports it felt like her attacker ‘dragged’ to the floor, pulled her skirt up, then entered her with his erect penis, only sprinting away when he was spotted by a passing cyclist.
Recalling the reported attack, the woman said: “I was just so shocked by the penis. It was there where it should not be. The feel of it. The round head going in,” adding: “I just remember thinking he was foul. Really disgusting. Not clean. The smell. He was a smelly man. I think it’s still on me. A smoker. Not somebody who looks after themselves.”
The woman described her attacker as around six feet tall, ‘Middle Eastern-looking’ with ‘yellowy, pale skin’, ‘dark hair, shabby and short’, and a ‘messy beard’. The woman said she could not have consented to sex because ‘I did not even see the guy until it was happening’, and only remembers ‘freezing’ and feeling ‘horror’. The ‘thrusting’ lasted for around 20 to 30 seconds, she added.
But under cross-examination, defence counsel David Harounoff questioned whether the complainant could have felt Mr Mohmoudi’s penis and alleged ‘thrusting’, because his client has a small penis and cannot ‘get it up’. Mr Mohmoudi’s case is he thought he recognised the victim, approached her to offer her help, but ran off when she ‘became hysterical’ and started shouting at him.
Asked by Mr Harounoff what she remembered of the penis, the complainant confirmed she had told a detective about ‘the feel of it, the round head going in’. Asked for more detail, she said: “The penis was going backwards and forth inside my vagina.”
Asked how big, she said: “It was too big to be inside my vagina.” The complainant then grabbed a 30cm ruler from beside the witness stand and asked Mr Harounoff if he wanted an exact measurement, to the amusement of some jurors.
“It was the tip of his penis, backwards and forth?” probed Mr Harounoff, adding: “Why did you not say anywhere just the tip of his penis went inside.”
The complainant said: “It was enough. I was not asked. It was the width that hurt.”
Mr Harounoff hit back: “I’m going to suggest to you what you said is untrue. He has erectile dysfunction. He can’t get it up. It’s the defence case that he has erectile dysfunction and his penis is three inches long. The defence case is it would be physically impossible to have attempted or actually raped you.”
“That’s not true,” rebuffed the complainant.
‘This is completely implausible’
Mr Harounoff also asked the complainant to confirm whether she had ever been inside the defendant’s address at Booth House before, or whether she could remember facing him in the street, as it appeared on CCTV footage.
The complainant said she had not been to his home, had no memory of an interaction before the incident, and denied misspeaking about being ‘dragged’ when CCTV footage showed her already urinating in the alleyway.
“In all my answers I have given, I have been clear it was a feeling of being dragged. It was all a feeling of being dragged. I have been clear my memory is just of a physical sensation of being dragged,” she said, adding: “It was my memory. I had a feeling of being dragged. That is not untrue.”
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Mr Harounoff also grilled the complainant over her recollection about the defendant being ‘naked from the waist down’. The complainant said it was incorrect to characterise her evidence to police like this, and had been clear she meant: “He was naked from the waist. It’s what I can feel. Not what I can see. It’s true I could feel nakedness on the bottom half. He had his trousers down ‘a bit’.”
The woman said she accepted two out of three vaginal examinations at the Haven sexual offences clinic, but refused a third because ‘it would have hurt’.
Asked why she did not speak about the reported attack to the cyclist who helped her home, the complainant said she had started to mention ‘the guy’, but Bethany (the cyclist) tried to distract her by speaking to her about her pets. “I suggest to you this is completely implausible,” said Mr Harounoff. The complainant responded: “Mental health first aid. Mental health first aid.”
Mr Harounoff insisted: “If you had said to her you had just been raped, she would not have booked a taxi. She would have called the police there and then. You did not tell Bethany anything about being raped because you know perfectly well you were not raped.
Man and woman ‘seen grappling’
This week prosecutor Christiaan Moll played CCTV footage tracking the complainant’s journey from exiting a Black Cab on White Church Lane in Whitechapel, to a bus stop and onto a bus, and then walking down Stratford Broadway to the scene of the incident. Footage shows the woman entering an alleyway to urinate, followed by the defendant a while later.
Hidden behind what looks like a large gate or fence, the complainant shouts ‘Wait, wait, wait. F**k you. F**k off. F**k you. F**k off’. Moments after a cyclist passes in the background, the defendant appears to run away from the scene.
When the cyclist, was interviewed by police, they said they heard the shouts of ‘f**k off’ and could see a man and woman on the floor ‘grappling’. As the cyclist got their phone out to call police, they said the man looked up at them and then ran off towards Stratford station. When they went to help the woman, she was ‘going through cycles of being in shock and breaking down into tears’.
The cyclist remembered the alleged attacker as a man with not much hair, dark eyebrows, light skin ‘but not white’, and ‘quite a big build but not very tall’.
The trial under judge Timothy Greene continues.
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