Victim of Willoughby plotter says lack of punishment served as ‘encouragement’

For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails

Sign up to our free breaking news emails

Please enter a valid email address

Please enter a valid email address

SIGN UP

I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy policy

A past victim of Gavin Plumb has said the lack of punishment for his attempted kidnap of her was “only encouragement” as the security guard faces jail for a plot to kidnap, rape and murder Holly Willoughby.

Gavin Plumb, 37, was snared after a US undercover police officer infiltrated an online group called Abduct Lovers and became so concerned about Plumb’s posts that evidence was passed to the FBI.

US law enforcement in turn contacted police in the UK, and when Essex Police officers raided Plumb’s flat in Harlow they found bottles of chloroform and an “abduction kit” complete with cable ties.

Plumb wept after jurors unanimously convicted him of soliciting murder and inciting rape and kidnap following an earlier trial at Chelmsford Crown Court.

He is due to be sentenced at the same court on Friday.

Ahead of the hearing, a former victim of Plumb, who chose to remain anonymous in their interview with the BBC, spoke of being “frozen and scared” when he attempted to kidnap her.

The woman told the broadcaster: “He had a rope and replica gun on him.

“As I read that note it was only then I looked at him. My first impression was that: he is huge, I have no chance.

“There was this moment when I was frozen and scared.

“But it was also disbelief, I thought maybe he is joking, it is absurd, but he started approaching me with his hands, he held his hand on my knee and he was indicating that ‘we are going to go’.

“After the initial freeze and disbelief I realised what’s going on and I was frightened, that feeling was growing because I started realising that this massive man wants to get me off the train and I knew the next station is in a small village.”

Plumb’s victim added: “I had all the worst scenarios cooking in my head. And I thought if I get off that train, he can do anything and so my thought was not to get off that train at any cost.”

Asked if she felt a prison sentence could have prevented future attacks, the woman told the BBC: “I believe so, I believe that lack of punishment was only encouragement.

“He could go unpunished doing whatever he did, if he got away with it – why not try again?”

She continued: “Potentially every man can be a perpetrator and I understand that so many women think along the same lines. A large man sitting right next to a girl: that is a potential danger.

“It is really sad but that is one of those takeaways from that unfortunate story for me.

“When I look at men I very often do that quick judgement, what level of danger are they?”

Former This Morning presenter Ms Willoughby said after Plumb’s conviction last week that women “should not be made to feel unsafe… in our own homes”.

Addressing the security guard’s latest victim, the woman told the BBC: “I do feel for Holly because obviously she had to go through it in the spotlight, it must be difficult.

“You do not want your name to be attached to a person like Gavin Plumb and this is one reason I want to remain anonymous. I do not want to be associated with him in any way.”

The trial was told that Plumb’s plans were foiled when a potential accomplice who he spoke to online turned out to be an undercover officer from the Owatonna Police Department in the US state of Minnesota.

Plumb told the officer, who was using the pseudonym David Nelson, that he was “definitely serious” about his plot to kidnap Ms Willoughby, leaving the officer with the impression that there was an “imminent threat” to her.

When Plumb was arrested on October 4 last year and officers told him that the allegations concerned Ms Willoughby, the defendant told them: “I’m not gonna lie, she is a fantasy of mine.”

The Dancing On Ice star waived her right to anonymity in connection with the charge against Plumb of assisting or encouraging rape.

Alleged victims of sex offences or targets of sex offence conspiracies have a right to automatic anonymity for life from the moment an allegation is made by them or anyone else.

Plumb’s kidnap plans involved attempting to “ambush” Ms Willoughby at her family home – even discussing taking time off work in order to organise the attack.

He told others he would then take the presenter to another location, which he suggested would be a “dungeon”-type room.

Prosecutors described Plumb’s plot as “carefully planned” – pointing to the items he had purchased and the lengths to which he had gone to find out when Ms Willoughby did not have security.

In her opening to the jury, prosecutor Alison Morgan KC told the court of his previous convictions for false imprisonment and attempted kidnap, saying that they showed he “knew what it would take to terrify and overpower a woman”.

Plumb had argued in his defence that it was just online chat and fantasy.

Asked what she now thought of her past attacker, the anonymised victim told the BBC: “I feel like he lost his life, anybody has capacity to have a wonderful life ahead of them.

“He has in my eyes, he has nothing in life. It makes him in a way more dangerous, you know a person who has nothing to lose.

“No ability to control himself. I almost feel pity for him.”

Plumb will be sentenced by judge Mr Justice Edward Murray.