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.
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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.
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.
“It’s made me feel dirty, numb and tainted.
“He invaded my body by force and branded me from within. He became an unwanted part of my body that I can’t get rid of.
“No one should fight like their life depends on it for something as simple as consent.”
The court heard his asylum status would be “adversely affected” by his sentence.
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