Britain’s ‘Most Prolific’ Rapist Was a Man Who Drugged and Raped 190 People

This article originally appeared on VICE Indonesia.

Reynhard Sinaga, a 36-six-year-old Indonesian doctoral student, has been sentenced to life in prison in the United Kingdom for 159 sex offences, earning him the title of "the most prolific rapist in British legal history.”

He lured young men to his flat in a popular Manchester nightlife district, where he drugged and sexually assaulted them, recording the attacks on his phone.

Over the course of four trials, Sinaga was found guilty of 136 counts of rape, eight counts of attempted rape, 14 counts of sexual assault, and one count of assault by penetration, against a total of 48 survivors, all men in their late teens and early twenties. Based on 3.29 terabytes of video evidence acquired from Sinaga’s devices, police believe the Indonesian national assaulted at least 190 men, but many of them have no recollection of the events or cannot be identified.

With four degrees under his belt, Sinaga had been living off his wealthy parents’ fortune as a perpetual student near Manchester’s Gay Village.

British police uncovered evidence for a series of rapes between January 2015 and June 2017, but authorities believe he has been committing crimes since 2007, when he arrived in England. Sinaga would wait for young men in front of Manchester night clubs, targeting intoxicated club-goers, then invite them to his flat for a drink. Sinaga laced their drinks with Gamma-hydroxybutyric-acid (GHB), a date rape drug.

Sinaga got away with his crimes for two and a half years, undetected by law enforcement. On June 2, 2017, one of the men he attacked regained consciousness as he was penetrating him. The teenager attacked Sinaga and notified police.

On January 6, Sinaga received a life sentence with a minimum of 30 years in prison. In addition to the hours of video recordings, Sinaga also saved “keepsakes” from the men he attacked, including ATM cards, SIM cards, and mobile phones. Police identified survivors in the footage using facial recognition technology. Many of the survivors had not been certain they had been raped, but noticed a change in themselves after being attacked.

“I’m at the point now where I feel life could not get any worse. This has been my worst nightmare become a reality,” one survivor, who said he would have killed himself had he been unable to confide in his mother, wrote in a statement read to the court. Other survivors told the BBC that after being attacked, it became difficult to lead normal lives. Some could no longer work or finish university, while others ran away from home and abandoned their families.

During his sentencing hearing, judge Suzanne Goddard told Sinaga, “In my judgment you are a highly dangerous, cunning, and deceitful individual who will never be safe to be released, but that is a matter for the Parole Board.”

Until receiving his sentence, Sinaga insisted that all sexual encounters had been consensual, claiming that the men had agreed to fulfill his sexual fantasy by pretending to be asleep during sex. After Sinaga pleaded not guilty, jurors were forced to watch hours of unsettling footage to prove that the men had indeed been unconscious after having been drugged.

In Sinaga’s home country, Indonesians watched in horror as the case unfolded; some out of sympathy for the survivors, but others out of hatred for the LGBTQ community. “This case is an example of why the LGBT community is so dangerous,” one Twitter user wrote. “This just confirms that the LGBT community should be banned from serving in the police or military,” wrote another.