Former Wah!Banana actor guilty of raping woman he met on Tinder

SINGAPORE: A former actor at comedy channel Wah!Banana was found guilty on Friday (Mar 21) of raping a woman he met on dating app Tinder. 

Lev Panfilov, a Singapore permanent resident from Russia, was convicted by a High Court judge on all four charges he claimed trial to - rape, sexual assault by penetration and molest. 

The victim cannot be named due to a gag order protecting her identity. 

Delivering the guilty verdict, Justice Pang Khang Chau said that the victim had been an "unusually convincing" witness, although he noted that her testimony was "not without difficulty". 

He raised several points that the defence had highlighted in its bid to show the victim had been inconsistent. 

One of them had been how the victim had given Panfilov her home address so that he could call a private-hire vehicle to send her home after the incident. 

She had also continued to respond to his text messages after that, and took three days to see a doctor after experiencing pain from being raped. 

One alleged inconsistency was how the victim told the doctor that she had screamed during the incident, but told others that she wanted to scream but did not, or could not.

Another detail was how the victim made a "seemingly strange" request to a doctor for a memo of her injuries to show to Panfilov's family. In court, the victim testified that she could not recall making such a request. 

Justice Pang said that having examined the evidence, he found that there were reasonable explanations for most of these difficulties. 

The rest were minor inconsistencies which were immaterial and did not affect the victim's overall credibility, he said. 

On the other hand, Justice Pang felt that Panfilov was not a credible witness, with the irregularities in his evidence "symptomatic of his attempt to distance himself from events", albeit unsuccessfully. 

Panfilov, who appeared in the dock dressed in a purple prison jumpsuit, had his head bowed as the verdict was read and constantly glanced at his relatives in the gallery. 

The prosecution's case had been that Panfilov sexually assaulted the victim in his room on Jan 12, 2021, following a meet-up with the victim at a Wine Connection restaurant earlier that day. 

The victim, a model-actress and an aspiring comedy scriptwriter, wanted Panfilov's help with her scriptwriting. 

They started working on the script at the restaurant and left to continue doing so at Panfilov's residence. 

As the two were watching comedians on YouTube in his room, Panfilov suddenly kissed the victim on her lips, and subsequently sexually assaulted her. 

Over the next few days, the victim reported feeling depressed but decided against telling her mother or sister for fear of worrying them.

She finally decided to see a doctor as she worried about the pain in her vaginal area and lower abdomen, and was told by the doctor to lodge a police report. 

The victim then spoke to several police officers on Jan 16, 2021, but decided against lodging a report, worried that the police would not believe her and that others would find out about the incident. 

She also felt traumatised about having to explain what happened to the police officers. 

She lodged a police report on Jan 18, 2021, after having told her mother about the incident. 

The defence sought to argue that victim had initiated the sexual encounter and that both then progressed to consensual sex. 

Panfilov will be sentenced at a later date.