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A suspected serial rapist prowled the streets of St Kildas for five years, luring sex workers into his car with the false promise of normal services before subjecting them to disgusting abuse, a court said.
Wei Feng, 49, is on trial in Victoria County Court after pleading not guilty to 12 counts, including five of rape between 2013 and 2017.
The Melbourne man is accused of assaulting six women, including five sex workers and a sixth who says she was not working in the sex industry.
He denied the allegations and said the incidents did not happen or were consensual.
The court heard that Mr. Feng was arrested following an alleged attack on the sixth woman as she returned to a friend’s home in Sunshine, near her address, around 10 p.m. on February 26, 2017.
Prosecutor Jo Piggott said the woman was allegedly taken in Mr. Feng’s car and driven to a secluded location where she was strangled, slapped multiple times, asked to “do as she was told” and raped. .
When Mr. Feng let the woman out of the car, two passers-by said they found her “on the ground, crying for help” and clutching her shirt, the court heard.
Passers-by called the police and took the woman to one of their homes to take care of her, the court heard.
Mr. Feng was arrested and charged in March 2017.
Five years earlier, on March 27, 2013, police alleged that Mr. Feng’s first victim got into his car for arranged sex.
Instead, she was slapped, strangled and forced into sexual acts she never consented to, the court said.
Police allege it was a very similar story for three other women.
A sex worker was called into Mr. Feng’s car on November 14, 2016, at the intersection of Greeves and Carlisle streets, but refused to provide services without a condom, the court said.
Police allege that Mr. Feng handcuffed her to his car and drove away, dragging her, squeezing her hair and shouting curses.
Her stiletto heels broke as she was pulled to the side of the car and her legs were injured, requiring surgery, it is alleged.
The court heard the women first call the police who did not show up before reporting a passing police vehicle and giving an account with the car’s registration number.
At the time, Mr Feng was located and the police served him with a notice of prohibition from St Kilda for about a year, Ms Piggott said.
The court heard that four of the six alleged victims remembered a baby seat in the back of the car that Mr. Feng and his wife used for their young daughter.
Beads from one of the alleged victim’s bracelets were found in his vehicle, along with fingerprints from another alleged victim, Ms Piggott said.
Mr. Feng’s attorney, Paul Kounnas, told the jury that Mr. Feng had never met three of the women and completely denied their version of events.
He said three of the other women were sex workers with whom Mr. Feng had consensual sex in his car, including the sixth alleged victim who says she is not a sex worker.
The trial continues on Tuesday.
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