Community news. Cambridge graduate wife mouths support for rapist husband who told victim he was attacking her because ‘he didn’t get sex at home’ as he gets life
- Adriana Ford-Thompson describes husband Mark as ‘kind and sensitive’
- Sentenced to life with 11-year minimum for sex assaults on four women
- But wife vows to stand by martial arts expert husband, a pastor’s son
- Pair believed to have met while both working in Tanzania in 2006
- He told victim: ‘I don’t get sex from my wife, so I go to get it elsewhere’
A Cambridge University graduate has defended her sex predator husband who told his victim he was raping her because ‘he didn’t get sex from his wife’.
Adriana Ford-Thompson, a York University research and teaching fellow, described her 37-year-old husband Mark Thompson – branded a danger to women by the judge – as ‘gentle, kind and sensitive’.
Rapist Mark Thompson and his wife, York University academic Adriana Ford-Thompson. She mouthed ‘I love you’ to him as he was jailed.
The environmentalist said the jury had ‘taken my husband away from me’ by finding him guilty, before he was given life in jail for the kidnap and rape of a student and sex attacks on three other women.
Mrs Ford-Thompson, who worked in Tanzania with her future husband in 2006 on a research project into sustainable forestry, sat through every day of his trial and vowed to stand by him despite hearing harrowing details of the ordeal suffered by a 21-year-old student at the university she works at.
The woman was walking home from her job in a club at 3.50am when he snatched her from the street and bundled her into his white van before raping her three times as he drove around the city.
Rapist Mark Thompson and his wife, York University academic Adriana Ford-Thompson. She mouthed ‘I love you’ to him as he was jailed
Teesside Crown Court heard that at one point, martial arts expert Thompson – who is the son of a church pastor – told the undergraduate: ‘I don’t get sex from my wife, so I go to get it elsewhere.’
But despite the shocking details of self-confessed drug taker and adulterer Thompson’s crimes, Mrs Ford-Thompson mouthed ‘I love you’ and ‘stay strong’ to him throughout the nine-day trial.
By MARK DUELL Article and photos courtesy The Mail Online
