A man from Sompting has been sent to prison for 16 years after being convicted of raping two women in Brighton. After an eight-day trial, Mohammed Joinal, 29, of West Street in Sompting was found guilty of the attacks, which took place after he approached the victims late at night on two separate occasions. Sussex Police said his first attack took place on Brighton Beach, after a woman in her 30s left a club in Madeira Drive around 11pm in October 2017. As police analysed forensic evidence from this rape, another woman reported being attacked in the same way, in January 2018, in the bedsit where Joinal lived in the St. George's Road area of Kemptown. This victim, also in her 30s, had left a pub in the same road at about 11.45pm that night. At this point, police were able to link the two incidents using DNA evidence, but Joinal was not found on their national genetic database. However, in April 2019, officers obtained Joinal's DNA after an arrest for an unrelated matter — and his sample matched evidence from the two rapes. DC Louise Scott, of the Brighton Safeguarding Investigations Unit, said: "Joinal approached both these women late at night, at a time when both were very obviously vulnerable. "In the first instance, he appeared to befriend the victim and, in the second, he offered to assist the victim in getting home, but both were subsequently raped. "I want to commend the courage of these women in supporting our investigation for the time it has taken, and for giving evidence in person at the trial, with support throughout from our specially trained officers." In addition to Joinal's 16-year prison sentence handed down at Brighton Crown Court, he will be a registered sex offender indefinitely. He was also given a court Sexual Harm Prevention Order (SHPO) which will indefinitely severely restrict his access to females.
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