Jordan Shodeke convicted in Baby kidnapping

January 31, 2009 by Baby Chums
Filed under: News

Jordan Shodeke, a fitness instructor who stalked and then raped a woman then kidnapped her baby son, was jailed for 13-and-a-half years today.

Jordan’s actions were after the female victim charity worker befriended him and tried to find him employment.

The Court heard he suddenly “threw her over his shoulder”, imprisoned her in her home and then forced himself upon her. This was after she agreed to a drink as reward for her kindness.

Karen Holt, prosecuting said: “He put his hands around her neck for several minutes until she began … to lose consciousness.”

After the attack, he tracked her down again, “Called her incessantly”, even turning up at her work and repeatedly threatened to hurt or kill her. A week after she gave birth to her son, he confronted her in the street, grabbed the baby and yanked him from his pushchair.

He then punched the young mother to the ground, hit her pregnant sister in the stomach and then turned on her brother-in-law when he rushed to their aid.

After fleeing with the screaming infant he phoned, threatening to throw him into a canal, but ended up dumping him in the dingy stairwell of a block of flats instead.

The whole ordeal left her so traumatized she fled abroad to make a new life for herself and her son.

The court heard his arrest prompted a police probe which found he had subjected a second woman to a “lengthy course of harassment”, bombarding her with up to 50 texts and 100 phone calls a day, visiting her work and repeatedly threatening her family.

Jordan Shodeke, 26, of Kennington, South London, claimed his first victim had consented to sex, and then, like the second woman he stalked, had lied repeatedly.

But he was convicted of rape, false imprisonment, actual bodily harm, kidnap, common assault, and causing fear of violence by harassment to his two victims between December 2006 and October 2007.

Passing sentence, Judge Nicholas Philpot said while “the probability of further offences against women is high” there was still not enough evidence to conclude he posed “a significant risk to members of the public”.

He said the offences against the woman he raped involved “planning, abduction, detention and use of force” as well as a period of harassment.

“I think it likely that in time, perhaps a long time, she will get over this experience but the impact statement discloses that for the moment she has been seriously affected in her relationships with men.

“She has felt obliged to make a new life abroad,” he added.