A UNIVERSITY student who imprisoned a young woman in his car and assaulted her in a St Albans supermarket car park has been jailed for three-and-a-half years.

Vibinmon Joseph, 25, held the female student inside a locked car which he parked overnight in the Sainsbury’s supermarket car park in Everard Close, St Albans on January 27 this year.

The offences happened after Joseph embarked on a campaign of “possessive and obsessive behaviour” towards the woman.

Joseph was sentenced at St Albans crown court following a trial earlier this year when he was found guilty of false imprisonment, assault occasioning actual bodily and common assault.

Joseph, a student at the University of Wales, was cleared of raping the woman in his car as well as four offences of sexually assaulting her.

He was also cleared of kidnapping her and a second charge of common assault.

Following his conviction in September Joseph, of Newport, Gwent, was remanded in custody and brought back to St Albans Crown Court on Friday for sentencing.

At the trial, his 26-year-old victim alleged that before raping her he had forced her to go through a bizarre wedding ceremony in his car which was parked in Stockwood Park in Luton.

She said he placed a chain around her neck, telling her it made her his wife.

She claimed he had stripped her and bound and gagged her during her ordeal in the car. He even produced a video camera to film her.

Giving evidence, Joseph told the jury she had tied him up and became upset when he wouldn’t have sex with her.

He claimed they had planned to marry next year and he wasn’t going to have full sex with her until their wedding.

In the witness box the victim told the jury it was never planned that they would marry and she didn’t want a relationship with him.

During the trial, the jury had been told that Joseph became obsessed with the victim after meeting her last October when she came to the UK to study.

His pursuit of her culminated in the bizarre marriage service at Stockwood Park after which he drove her to the St Albans supermarket car park and attacked her.