A MAN who went on the run for seven years after attempting to rape a woman in a Doncaster alleyway told her rescuers: “You don’t understand, it’s my wife.”
Only the actions of two neighbours saved the 41-year-old victim when they heard her screams and made a citizen’s arrest before handing Slovakian Milan Tirpak to the police.
While on police bail he returned to his home country with his family, but came back to the UK without hiding his identity to work in Cardiff for four years, and then Bradford, before he was eventually re-arrested in August this year.
Tirpak, aged 39, of Bishop’s Street, Bradford, admitted attempted rape on May 20, 2005, and failing to surrender to bail.
Prosecutor Fiona Swain told Sheffield Crown Court the woman was weeding a neighbour’s garden under some new street lights in a Doncaster suburb.
She was approached by Tirpak, then a neighbour, who asked if he could buy her car which was parked in the street but she declined.
About 10 minutes later she walked down an alleyway to go home - only for Tirpak to grab her and manhandle her onto an old mattress.
She began struggling and kneed him to try to fight him off while crying for help. Her screams were heard by neighbours at a nearby barbecue and two men ran to the scene and saw the sobbing victim lying flat on the mattress with her jeans around her ankles, and Tirpak fumbling with his trousers.
He ran off but was caught by the two men.
Lying Tirpak repeatedly told them: “You don’t understand, it’s my wife.”
Rachim Singh, defending, said Tirpak had gone to relieve himself in the alleyway and ‘thought in his own mind that she was flirtatious’ - but accepted that was not the Crown’s case.
Tirpak was jailed for three years and four months. He was placed on the Sex Offenders’ Register and at the Home Secretary’s discretion could be deported after his sentence.
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