International rugby player jailed for raping woman after saying he was gay to get asylum in UK
International rugby player jailed for raping woman after saying he was gay to get asylum in UK
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AN international rugby player has been jailed for raping a woman — after saying he was gay to get asylum here. Uganda winger Philip Pariyo, 32, played at the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow but failed to return to Africa, alleging he would be persecuted for being homosexual. But he later had a girlfriend in Cardiff and then raped another woman. Pariyo, who worked as a binman in the Welsh capital, repeatedly badgered his victim for sex before forcing himself upon her at her flat in 2021, a court heard.
![[Mugshots of Philip Pariyo and Benon Kizza.]](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/b6bb4bd2-3b75-47ba-9382-3674c4c3e178_0c4aaa.jpg?strip=all&w=791)
He then went with her to buy the morning-after pill the following day and asked her to buy condoms so they could have sex again. Pariyo denied rape but was found guilty following a trial at Cardiff crown court and was jailed 4½ years. In a victim impact statement, the woman said: “No one in the world should go through what I did, fighting and begging for my life. "It has left lasting impacts on me, and has felt like an open wound that I can never heal from.
![[Rugby player Philip Pariyo running with a rugby ball.]](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/2021-went-buy-morning-pill-969668706.jpg?strip=all&w=765)
