A first-time Airbnb host barricaded herself in her room with knives after she was allegedly raped by a graphic designer guest who told her the next morning he’d leave a “good review.”
The unidentified South Londoner claims Diego Dellarovere, 43, of nearby Kensington, raped her in her Croydon home in 2021 after offering to massage her as he rubbed her shoulders.
“He mentioned massage at that point and was following me very close and came behind me and started rubbing my shoulders and I said: ‘No thanks,’” she told detectives in a recording play before the court.
“Then when I was sitting on the couch he was touching my legs and said: ‘Put on spa music and I can give you a massage.’ He was saying: ‘I have oil. I will give you a massage,’” she said, according to Daily Mail.
They had been chatting on her couch with glasses of wine when she realized he was “getting a bit handsy,” but she let that slide because “he’s Italian and they do that,” she said, according to The Sun.
Then “things turned” and he grabbed her “quite strongly” and was kissing her neck and chest while putting his hands into her leggings, she said.
“I was saying ‘no’ quite a lot and pushing and he stuck his tongue in my mouth and moved from there to my breast and his hand went down inside my leggings,” she said, according to the Telegraph.
He then allegedly pulled down his pants and underwear and forced her to perform a sex act on him.
“At one stage he had managed to get my top off and then I was like: ‘You need to stop this,’ but it was a good half hour more [before] stopping his advances,” she said. “I was like: ‘I think you should go to bed’ and he went to bed and I barricaded my door.”
She gathered up her dog and cat and barricaded herself in her room with her kitchen knives, blocking the door with a piece of furniture, she said.
But Dellarovere began texting her, asking to share a bed, allegedly promising that “I won’t do anything,” The Sun reported.
The woman was so distressed she phoned a friend, who told jurors the victim sounded “very upset.”
“She was scared, she was terrified of what was going to happen that she just kept saying, ‘I don’t know why this happened to me’ and she kept repeating, ‘I said no,’” the friend said.
When the woman and her friend met up later on, she said the victim was “very distressed, very teary, and started to shake.”
Dellarovere eventually left the apartment and returned around 2 a.m., the Telegraph reported. He went to bed in the spare room and told her the next morning he’d “leave a good review.”
The woman had reportedly only planned on reporting the incident to Airbnb but reconsidered filing a police report after realizing her alleged attacker might strike again.
“My thought was that he is likely going to do that to someone again so I want his name to be flagged,” she told detectives.
Dellarovere was her first-ever guest and she admitted she thought it was strange he needed a room when he lived nearby in Kensington, but she accepted the request nonetheless.
She had left Deallrovere neutral reviews on the platform, to which he allegedly messaged her saying the assault was consensual and told her she had “liked it,” Daily Mail reported.
“I didn’t see any objections from you,” he allegedly wrote, while telling the woman she was “repressed” and “not a good person.”
The graphic designer denies orally raping the woman or sexually assaulting her.
