A ‘sexual predator’ jailed for 22 years for assaulting two men in his Cotswolds cottage will take his case to the Court of Appeal.
Lawyers for Luiz da Silva Neto will seek to persuade the senior judges at London’s Royal Courts of Justice that the two-decade sentence was excessive.
His case will be heard on June 28.
Da Silva Neto, 36, from Wandsworth, was found guilty last summer of sexually assaulting two men at his home in Middle Barton, Oxfordshire, in late 2021. He was convicted of administering a 'date rape' drug, causing or inciting another to engage in sexual activity without consent and possession of a ‘party bag’ of illegal drugs.
READ MORE: Luiz da Silva Neto jailed for 22 years for drugging, sexual assault and rape
The first of his victims, who was known to the defendant and had gone to the AirBnB-advertised cottage to help carry out works on the property, awoke on the night of November 10 to find himself naked, ‘paralysed’ and with da Silva Neto carrying out a sex act on him.
A month later, on December 10, a different man – a married London executive, who had been out drinking with colleagues at the Raffles bar in Chelsea’s Kings Road – woke up, nude, in the chocolate box cottage that was rented out by da Silva Neto and his partner to paying guests.
The victim, who claimed to have had a ‘tunnel vision’ like memory of being made to drink a dark liquid, had no idea where he was or who he had gone there with.
When da Silva Neto’s phone was later analysed by the police they found photographs and footage of the victim. The man looked ‘incoherent’ while the ‘animated’ defendant could be heard telling the man to ‘be a good boy’ and ‘giz us a kiss’.
READ MORE: Impassive as he's found guilty of assaulting married executive
The court heard that other videos found on da Silva Neto’s phone by the police showed him secretly-filming men at urinals on December 9, the night of the second incident. In one video he could be heard asking a man if he lived around the area, prosecutor Matthew Walsh told the jury.
At trial, da Silva Neto accepted drug-taking as part of a sexually promiscuous lifestyle, but denied all allegations of sexual misconduct. He claimed any intimacy between him and the two men was consensual.
Sentencing him to 22 years’ imprisonment last July, Judge Michael Gledhill KC said: “If anyone wants to know what effects these sorts of drugs that you were taking for your own pleasure have, all they have to do is look at the facts of this case.
“You say you were very deep into [drugs], that you behaved in a way you wouldn’t usually behave and I believe that.
“But you chose to take these drugs and you did precious little about it and you became a sexual predator.”
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