Three men who drugged a raped a 12-year-old girl after luring her from an Asda car park have been jailed for more than 50 years.
Kevin Horvath, 26, and Ivan Turtak, 38, first saw the girl by the supermarket in Dover and encouraged her to get in their car on August 11, 2024.
Over the next two days she was plied with drugs including crystal methamphetamine and amphetamine and sexually abused by them and a third man, 27-year-old Ernest Gunar.
Judge Sarah Counsell told Canterbury Crown Court the victim still has nightmares, has no friends and can no longer feel comfortable around large groups of people.
Relaying her words, the judge said: ‘I don’t feel like the same girl anymore, I just want to be her again and I hope that I will be her again.’
Speaking after the three men were convicted, the girl’s parents described how their once confident and outgoing daughter has become a shadow of her former self.
‘She doesn’t want to do anything now. She doesn’t leave the house without me, her dad, or his dad. She won’t go out of the house other than that.
‘She dragged her mattress into our bedroom when she was found. She slept in my room.
‘She’d wake up crying and screaming in the middle of the night.’
Gunar was jailed for 19 years while Horvath and Turtak were each jailed for 17 years.
All three will also serve three years of an extended licence period and received concurrent sentences for the other counts of rape, sexual assault and indecent images.
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During the three-day period, whenever they went out in public, the girl was too scared to talk to anyone or try to run away, the court heard.
She managed to escape from her captors after waking up before them on August 13.
While their initial meeting ‘appears to have been random’, the trio’s quickly became organised and they moved between different addresses including Gunar’s caravan in Folkstone.
‘There were elements of planning, and you acted together to commit these offences and you used drugs to facilitate your offending,’ added Judge Counsell.
The three men have shown little or no remorse and were all assessed as dangerous enough to warrant extended sentences by the judge.
They tried to claim during their trial that the girl had told them she was 19 or 20 and one of them described her as ‘sexually promiscuous’, the court heard.
The judge dismissed those assertions, saying: ‘She does not look anywhere near 19 or 20.’
Jurors at Canterbury Crown Court found the three men guilty of rape and other sexual offences after over 14 hours of deliberation in June.
Gunar was convicted of two counts of rape against a child under 13; Turtak was convicted of one count; and Horvath was convicted of sexual assault.
Horvath had already admitted three counts of rape against a child under 13, and one charge of assault by penetration of a child under 13, and Gunar, who is thought to be his cousin, had also admitted one charge of rape.
Turtak initially denied rape but did admit taking indecent photos of a child.
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