'I remember my mum crying all night'... the devastating impact of Manchester rapist Reynhard Sinaga's crimes on his victims

They spent months oblivious to the vile sex crimes they’d fallen prey to and had no memory of what happened - but Reynhard Sinaga’s victims face a life time of psychological scarring.

The serial rapist, 36, is now behind bars for life after carrying out 136 rapes, eight attempted rapes and 14 sexual assaults involving 48 victims between January 2015 and July 2017.

His victims bore no physical effects, thinking instead that Sinaga had helped them when they were drunk.

They only learned of their abuser’s despicable crimes months, or sometimes years later, after police launched a major investigation.

One victim was so devastated to find out he had been raped that he tried to kill himself on Christmas Day.

Another was terrified nobody would believe him and that Sinaga would walk free.

While one victim - who uses a stoma for Crohn’s Disease - was so disturbed to find out he had been raped three times that he asked doctors to remove his colon.

Sinaga’s methods allowed him to evade detection for years.

His use of 'G' - drugs used at sex parties and by clubbers which can have knock out effects - not only rendered them unconscious, but left them with severe memory loss.

He would rape or sexually assault them, often multiple times and for several hours.

One victim was raped seven times in eight hours.

Another was sedated, repeatedly raped and kept at his flat, on Princess Street in the city centre, for 15 hours.

These men woke up confused and embarrassed thinking they had passed out - sometimes having vomited or wet themselves - in a stranger’s flat.

‘I remember my mum crying all night’

Out of the 48 victims in whose cases convictions have been secured, all but one were oblivious to the attacks until police officers knocked on their door to tell them their suspicions.

It was only because his last victim woke up in the midst of being raped that Sinaga’s crimes were discovered.

Each of these men are repulsed by what happened, though some say they have managed to move on.

But for one - who now suffers from severe depression - finding out he had been the victim of rape was simply too much.

“It crushed me.

"How could you be so stupid?

"Me leaving the club and ending up in someone’s flat was so out of character,” he said in a victim impact statement read out at Manchester Crown Court.

“I don’t deserve this. It’s the first thing I think about in the morning and the last thing I think of at night.”

Dogged by the hazy memories of his encounter with Sinaga, he became paranoid, started to contemplate suicide and ‘felt guilty’ for being alive.

Then on Christmas Day, 2018, he hit rock bottom when someone made a comment about the attack.

“I wasn’t aware they knew,” he said.

That night he attempted suicide and ended up in hospital.

“I remember my mum crying all night.

"I have never been in such a bad place in all my life.

“This has been the worst two years of my life.”

Sinaga targeted each of his victims knowing that they were in a vulnerable state - either because they were drunk, or because they had taken illegal drugs.

For many, living as a survivor has left them feeling totally vulnerable.

“I was happy to go back to his place for a few drinks – never ever did I think he had this evil plot to abuse me that night,” another victim said.

“I will never forget the day police contacted me. I never thought it was to tell me I had been a victim of a sexual crime.

“I could not stop thinking about that night.

“I live in a small town where people know each other and I’m really worried people will find out about me.”

He has since stopped drinking and socialising, takes anti-depressants and doesn’t work.

“I want Sinaga to accept what he has done to me,” he said.

Another man said telling his girlfriend, mum and dad - who became very angry - was the hardest part.

He now gets very anxious when he goes out, doesn’t like busy places and often has to go home.

He lies awake at night thinking about what happened to him.

“The fact I have no memory of what happened did help but I was anxious a lot of the time,” he said.

The girlfriend of one victim, a man who was raped three times after a night out at Fifth, described how he ‘burst into tears’ after telling her about the attack.

“I had to hold him for hours and hours and we just talked about it.

"We did not sleep that night.”

She described how her boyfriend - who suffers from Crohn’s Disease and uses a stoma - had fallen ill after finding out about the rapes.

“He would say, it can’t have happened to me, I’ve had my bum sewn up,” she said.

Because of his condition, he has had his large intestine taken out.

He started to insist that doctors removed his colon - a procedure which could cause impotence and infertility.

“He did not want it in him after what happened,” his girlfriend said. “This shows the impact this has had on him.”

Another of Sinaga’s victims, a soldier, said the most profound consequence is’ 'how others perceive your reaction’.

“I lived on the mantra that because I was unaware of the crime until two and a half years later it had not changed me at all,” he said.

“I have tried, I believe successfully, to not let myself be characterised as someone who has been raped.

"That doesn’t stop others seeing me as such.”

One victim, who was injured during the course of the ordeal, said: “I don’t think I will ever be okay with what has happened.”

Another said he felt 'a sense of relief' that someone had filled in the gaps from a night that he remembered nothing of.

“I never classed myself as vulnerable,” he said.

“I never thought something like that would happen.

“I have been violated.

"I can never never change that.”

Some have kept the details of their abuse entirely to themselves.

One has not told anyone what happened and no longer likes socialising because he is convinced something will happen to him again.

He becomes extremely worried if someone wanders off,  in case something happens to them.

“I’m straight so I find the idea of what happened embarrassing,” he said.

For another victim, who was repeatedly raped over 15 hours, the fact that Sinaga denied his crimes added to his misery.

Knowing that he would have to give evidence at a trial he started to think about self harming before seeing a counsellor.

“I was on the road to self destruction,” he said.

He has lost his confidence, hates crowd, doesn’t see his friends or go out, his sex life is destroyed, and he says he ‘can’t communicate’

“(Sinaga)  has ruined my life, he has really messed my head up and sometimes I hate myself,” he said.

Richard Littler QC - defending Sinaga - said he was unable to mitigate for any of his crimes.

“It’s impossible to mitigate the facts of this case and I don’t intend to do so,” he told the court.

Sending him down Judge Goddard QC described Sinaga as a ‘calculated and cunning’ predator who had carried out a campaign of rape the likes of which she has never seen, praising the ‘deeply traumatised’ victims for their bravery whilst ‘suffering greatly’.

One turned up to court to see his abuser jailed.

Being raped, he said, has left him with a secret he refuses to tell anyone.

After being interviewed by police about that night he started screaming at himself while in the shower.

“I was so angry I had put myself in a position where this could happen,” he said, adding that he has ‘carried the burden on my own’ having never wanted to upset his mum or girlfriend.

“This has been the hardest thing I have ever had to deal with in my life,” he said.

“I have to live the rest of my life thinking what he did to me.”

Officers worked with rape and trauma experts when approaching men they suspected had been targeted by Sinaga.

As charity boss Duncan Craig OBE explains, for these men, the trauma started not with the crime, but when police first knocked at their door.

“Very few of the young men who were raped or assaulted were even aware of what had happened to them and so the first time it all got named was when the police knocked on the door.

“This is why in the investigation planning stages, we all thought it was important to get a crisis worker to go with the detective.

"Then there is a specially trained person there who can provide that immediate trauma response support.”

Duncan runs Manchester-based charity Survivors - which works exclusively with male victims of rape and sexual assault.

The charity has been working to counsel and support a number of Sinaga’s victims.

One victim, who was sexualy assaulted by Sinaga, described the 'panic' he felt when police knocked on his mother’s door asking to speak to him.

“At least the first time I spoke to the police I actually thought I was in trouble,” he told a jury during one of Sinaga’s four trials at Manchester Crown Court.

The memories the young man has of the night he was attacked are hazy.

While out drinking with friends he was refused entry to the Factory nightclub, was convinced by Sinaga to join him at his flat and recalls being offered something to drink.

He remembers the rapist punching him hard in the face, before waking up in his boxers on the floor of his apartment at Montana House.

It wasn’t until two years later, when he was approached by police, that he even remembered that night as unusual.

Officers had found images and videos of Sinaga sexually assaulting the victim on his iPhone.

His wallet and driving licence were also discovered at his flat.

“I was called by my mum, the police were at her address she was crying on the phone,” he told a jury.

“Ten minutes later they turn up in an unmarked car, question me about a wallet I had lost.

“I don’t have time to question anything.

“I was pretty panicked that whole day actually because I was never really told what was going on.”

After this, snapshots of memory came back to him.

He recalls that Sinaga had an inflatable dolphin in his bathtub, and that his apartment 'may have been on the first floor'.

But like each and every one of Sinaga’s victims, he remembers nothing of the rapes or sexual assaults he was subjected to.

“It’s only been quite recently that I have actually been able to talk about this,” he said.

For many of the victims, the experience of walking up semi-clad or naked in a stranger’s flat did, of course, set alarm bells ringing.

But almost none felt the physical effects of an attack and instead brushed off any suspicions they had been assaulted as far-fetched.

One victim described feeling confused and frightened when he woke up naked in a pool of vomit at Sinaga’s flat.

“I felt sick, I felt like I had been drugged and I was trying to piece together how I got there,” he told a jury.

“I felt very weak, my pupils were dilated and I didn’t feel like I had only drunk alcohol that night.

“When I woke up I saw a man in the bed 5-10 metres away from where I was. He was also naked.”

He later told his best friend and mum that he believed he had been raped.

During emotional evidence, his wife described returning home the following day to find the victim confused, disoriented and suffering panic attacks.

“He was really upset, very teary, very anxious, really scared about everything that had happened,” she said.

“He was scared because he didn’t really know what had happened and was still quite affected by the drugs. He still felt really different and strange.”

A friend of the victim told the court he remembers a ‘panicked conversation' the following day in which the victim said: “I have just woken up on some strange Asian man’s floor.”

After this the victim 'didn’t want to discuss it'.

"He wanted to brush it under the carpet and forget it, which is pretty much what happened for two years until the police got in contact with him," his friend said.

The work Greater Manchester Police officers have done to support victims has been unique and unprecedented.

Crisis workers from St Mary’s Sexual Assault Refferal Centre (SARC) went with detectives to meet the victims during their first inquiries.

They made sure each victim was immediately referred to an Independent Sexual Violence Advisor (ISVA), co-ordinated by Survivors Manchester.

“Anyone who has experienced sexual assault, rape or sexual abuse will tell you that how they deal with it can be so varied and different to how someone else did,” Duncan says.

“In society, we can still struggle to talk about male sexual violence and because it’s still not talked about, often it means those men and boys that have been directly affected can find themselves with very few people - or no one - to talk to.

“That’s why it’s been so important for us to really get the lads into the ISVA service across Survivors Manchester and St Marys SARC.”

For many of Sinaga’s victims, attending court to give evidence against the rapist has also proved a difficult experience.

Police and prosecutors have praised them for their bravery.

Deputy chief crown prosecutor for the North West, Ian Rushton, says Sinaga prolonged their trauma by running four trials.

He said: “There is a complete lack of remorse shown, no hint of any apology or explanation, disengagement from the authorities entirely.

“His narcissistic sense of entitlement grew as the offending went on to the extent that he kept trophies and momentous of those individuals that he violated. They are all quite unique features.

“In terms of scale of offenders we’ve come across, there are the mass murderers such as Harold Shipman and others of that nature, but in terms of sexual predatory behaviour this is almost off the scale.”

Detective Inspector Zed Ali, who led the Operation Island, says the young men giving testimony have been 'really brave'.

“Some of the offences have happened years ago, they’re not aware of it and we’re literally turning their lives upside down.

“There’s even a question of ‘do you tell them if they’ve got no memory?’

“Obviously it’s the right thing to do and something we must do, but that’s the impact that we’re having on their lives.

“And then for them to decide that yes they want justice, they want to do the right thing, they want to prosecute, is absolutely brave.

"Especially when they know the justice system is not particularly friendly.

“You are going to be cross examined by the defence, you will be accused of having consensual sex and making false allegations.

“Many of them have not wanted to disclose to their friends and family.

"They’re still quite embarrassed and shocked about the offence.

"They’re dealing with it all by themselves.

“A lot are quite young, they’re still at university or just in their first year of a new career.

"So what should be a really distinctive and exciting time of their life had been overshadowed by this evil rapist.”

For the police too, dealing with this unprecedented case has proved gruelling.

Officers have collated 3.29 terabytes of information - including hundreds of hours of graphic videos of sexual assaults - from Sinaga’s electronic devices.

As such, they’ve all been offered appointments with occupational health units, nurses and counsellors.

For disclosure officer Detective Constable Dot Orr, the effect of trawling through the evidence has stayed with her.

“I know it’s a bit silly when I’ve been a police officer so long, but within some of the videos there’s a certain pair of footwear and if I see those footwear I instantly see videos,” she says. “You just can’t help it.

“It doesn’t mean to say it affects you in any way that you’re traumatised by it, but there are just little things that will always remind you.”

DC Orr was amongst a team of officers tasked with approaching victims to tell them police suspected they had been raped.

She explains: “They’re such nice lads, and you’re chatting away and you think ‘the minute I say this next sentence I’m going to end your life as you know it, it’s not going to be the same ever again’.

“So you’re getting into a bit of a chat and you don’t want to say the word.

“Because he could have gone through the rest of his life without knowing, but now I’m going to tell him.

“You want to give them a hug. It’s hard, really really hard.”

Because of the upsetting nature of the evidence, jurors in all four trials will never have to serve on a jury again.

But in an unusual move, they have also been offered counselling.

“Some of the jurors physically cried after the trials,” DC Orr says.

DI Ali adds: “These are 12 ordinary members of the public here watching these videos.

"For people off the street, not knowing what background they come from, to be exposed to these videos my initial question was 'what support is available for jury members?'

“To begin with they just had a telephone number for the Samaritans, but that happens in every case.

"I thought ‘that’s not good enough’.”

As such, detectives raised the issue with Greater Manchester Combined Authority who set up a bespoke package of support for jurors after each trial.

It’s a package police hope the Ministry of Justice will now consider rolling out in all similar cases.

Though Sinaga has been convicted of offences against 48 men, police say they have evidence showing he committed crimes against 195.

As such they expect many more victims to come forward now details of the case can be reported.

Duncan - himself a survivor of sexual abuse - has encouraged anyone affected by the case to come forward if they need support.

“I want to publicly state how proud I am of each and every one of the lads involved in this case for standing up,” he says.

“Survivors Manchester can and will work out with the individual what is the best support.

“If someone has been raped recently, then we would encourage them to go to St Marys for a forensic examination, that doesn’t mean the police have to be involved, that’s their choice but it means any forensic evidence can be collected and stored and far more importantly, any health issues can be addressed and treated.”