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A Co Wicklow man has been jailed for two and a half years for sexually assaulting a young woman.
The matter only came to light a day after the incident when gardaí found mobile phone footage of the assault.
The victim (19) was out socialising with two friends in July 2014 when they met two men in their early 20s. Later, all five went back to the house of one of the men.
All five slept in the same room. As far as the three women were aware when they woke, nothing sexual had occurred. One of the men offered to drive them home.
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Returning to the house, he was involved in a crash. Gardaí investigating the collision accessed his phone and found three separate clips of one of the women being assaulted.
"She was in a comatose condition," prosecutor Paul Murray told Wicklow Circuit Court last Friday.
The three videos were of 38 seconds, three minutes and 24 seconds, and 22 seconds respectively. One of the videos was sent to the phone of the defendant via Whatsapp.
In one clip, he talks of “going in for the kill”. Later, when the victim stirs, he tells her to relax and go to sleep, saying “I’ll look after you”.
He says three times: “I will ruin her”.
The woman told gardaí that she did not know what had gone on and that she would not have let him touch her or film her.
In a victim impact statement, she said he had done an “evil and disgusting” thing.
When approached by gardaí, the man said the woman had been attracted to him. However, when they showed him the footage, he stopped co-operating with detectives.
Saying her client offered a full, sincere and abject apology, his barrister said the man had difficulty understanding what he had done.
She produced references, including one from his girlfriend who was standing by him.
Saying that the victim was perfectly entitled to socialise, Judge Michael O’Shea said: “She was perfectly entitled to fall asleep and believe she would be safe.”
Judge O’Shea said the defendant had exploited the situation to the maximum: “He was in a position to take maximum unfair and shocking advantage of her. She was at his complete mercy,” said the judge.
The man’s demeanour demonstrated utter disrespect for the woman.
“It appears that it would never have come to light if the accident had not happened and the phone not found,” he said.
Calling the assaults “disgusting, disgraceful, vile, revolting, shocking, horrific and degrading,” Judge O’Shead said mitigating circumstances included his guilty plea, his expressed remorse and that he was at the lower end of risk to reoffend.
The man was sentenced to three five-year sentences, running concurrently, and with the final two-and-a-half years of each suspended.