A LIMERICK man has been jailed for four years for having sex with his mentally impaired cousin.
John Culligan (49) lured his cousin out of her residential care home with a lunch invitation, pulled into a hotel car park and refused to let her out of the back of his van until she had sex with him.
Garda Pauline Coughlan revealed that the then 53-year-old victim, who recently died in a tragic accident, had been “delighted” to get invited to go for something to eat.
The court heard that the woman became “very disturbed” and “very disruptive” after the incident and had to be moved from the care home where she had lived for 12 years to spend the remainder of her life in a psychiatric hospital.
Judge Katherine Delahunt called it an “appalling crime” and said she thought it “absolutely appropriate” to send Culligan to jail.
She ordered that his name remain on the sex offenders register for 10 years and that he undergo post-release supervision for five years.
She further ordered that foreign authorities be notified if he moves to their country within the period.
Culligan had €5,000 in court to donate to charity but the victim’s family said they did not want to be associated with any donation. They also requested reporting restrictions be lifted so that Culligan could be identified.
Gda Coughlan told Melanie Greally, prosecuting, that the victim got into the back of Culligan’s van that day because he’d told her the front passenger seat was broken.
Culligan, a married father, of Roches Road, Rathkeale, pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to having sex with a mentally impaired person in a Limerick hotel car park on January 26th, 2004.
Gda Coughlan said Culligan admitted having sex with his cousin and accepted she didn’t “actively” take part in the act but claimed it was consensual.
The garda told Ms Greally that the woman’s behaviour became increasingly “disturbed and disruptive” in the days following the incident and doctors moved her to a more secure psychiatric hospital, where she died recently in a tragic accident.
The woman had been free to come and go at her former home because she had been previously diagnosed with a moderate learning difficulty and not a mental illness.