'My best friend married the man who raped me and my life was destroyed', says bridesmaid

A bridesmaid-to-be looking forward to her best friend’s wedding has told how her life was destroyed after she was raped by the groom – and then shunned by his bride for exposing his vile attack.

Royal Army Medical Corps officer Daniel Howard, 29, was jailed last week for seven years.

His new wife, April, had refused to believe he had carried out the assault, and went ahead with her wedding just three weeks before his trial.

Her former best friend, a university pal who thought their friendship would be a lifelong bond, said: “I was meant to be a bridesmaid at her wedding.

"We were meant to have children at similar times and raise them together. I only said something in the first place to try to protect April.

“I couldn’t have stood in church on her wedding day knowing what had happened and that it would most probably happen again.”

Revealing her heartbreak in a victim impact statement, the woman – who we are not naming – added: “Our whole friendship group has become divided when I most needed my close friends.

“I went travelling around Asia by myself before all this – now I’m scared to live by myself in England.”

The attack happened at Howard’s home following a night out in Darlington, County Durham. He left the bed he shared with fiancee April, and went to the room next door to rape her friend.

His terrified victim, a professional woman now aged 26, tried to call her boyfriend after the attack but his phone was switched off.

She went to hospital alone, where nurses contacted police.

The woman spoke of how her boyfriend had been like “a rock” as she struggled to cope, but took his own life in the wake of the attack.

She said: “He felt partly responsible for what had happened, he had turned his phone off that night. I couldn’t get hold of him.

“He never forgave himself for that. He always worried every time I went somewhere and wouldn’t sleep if I went out, it put a strain on us.”

Culled from Mirror Uk