TEENAGER'S ANGER AFTER RAPIST RELEASED
A TEENAGER who gave birth to her rapist's baby faces the daily fear of seeing him after he was released from jail to live on her doorstep.Brave 18-year-old Lisa Askew has agreed to lift her anonymity – and that of her two-year-old baby Callum – to help her suffering sister, Claire.
Claire Capocci and her family, who live yards from the rapist, claim a cruel campaign of harassment from him and his associates.
Lisa was raped five days after her sixteenth birthday and, despite a morning after pill given by a police surgeon, gave birth to a baby boy nine months later.
Last month, rapist Robert Hubert was released from Norwich jail after serving 21 months of a three-and-a-half year sentence.
He moved back to Shakespeare Road within two miles of Lisa's Morgan Drive home, which she shares with her baby.
Only three weeks after his release from prison, Lisa reported verbal abuse from her rapist to police while she was on her way to visit her sister.
She told the Evening Star: "I reported the verbal abuse to police and an officer came round and just told me to avoid the Whitton estate until it had all blown over.
He said there was bound to be some bitterness and that if I saw Hubert I should just walk on the other side of the road." But as well as visiting her sister Claire in Spenser Road, Callum's baby clinic is on the estate.
Lisa's mum, Kim Walker, went further.
She said: "My daughter was raped and now she has been told she's not allowed to visit her own sister.
We haven't got a car so she has to walk past where he lives.
Can you imagine what that feels like?
Where is the justice in that?" Lisa made the brave decision to keep the baby with the support of her close knit family.
She said: "It was a part of me and I couldn't kill it.
I thought of it as my baby not his.
I still do." Family lawyer Cathryn Smith said: "Under the circumstances and bearing in mind the child was conceived as the result of a rape, I have absolutely no doubt the court would deny such a request." This month police and the probation service unveiled a multi-agency public protection agency (MAPP) to safeguard victims' interests.
Despite its boast to "ensure provision for victims to pass on their concerns", the family says it has been let down by all the agencies whose job it is to protect her.
Mrs Walker has given up counting the number of times she has reported Hubert and his associates to police for the alleged harassment of her family.
Not only is Lisa scared to visit her sister, Claire also claims she is terrified to leave her own home.
Claire and her husband Dominic, who have two children Joshua and Chloe, have also reported alleged harassment from Hubert and his associates.
The family has even written to local central Suffolk and north Ipswich MP Sir Michael Lord calling for Claire and her family to be rehoused.
Mrs Capocci said: "We have gone through hell and no one wants to listen to us.
I can't believe that he's been put straight back where he has been.
Knowing what he did to my sister, they don't understand what that's like to see him every day." On police instructions Mrs Capocci has kept a diary of alleged harassment.
She says the entries almost number a hundred.
But when the Evening Star spoke to Hubert he denied any wrongdoing.
When asked about the alleged harassment, he said: "I didn't do anything.
I never cause any trouble." Hubert was convicted in Ipswich Crown Court on October 27, 2000 just over a year after raping Lisa in 1999.
He was not remanded in custody pending the rape trial, but was remanded three months before his trial and conviction due to alleged harassment.
Facing the greater charge of rape, Hubert was never charged for harassment, and the three months served on remand taken off his 42-month sentence.
