Court hears of woman's assault ordeal

A woman was subjected to a five-hour ordeal on the night she passed a higher university degree, after sitting into the car of…

A woman was subjected to a five-hour ordeal on the night she passed a higher university degree, after sitting into the car of a man she did not know near a night club in Dublin city centre.

Tralee Circuit Criminal Court yesterday heard how the woman was driven to and around the Dublin/Wicklow Mountains where she was badly assaulted and feared for her life. During the course of the night, her hands were bound behind her back and she was struck repeatedly on the head with punches and with a Garda-type baton, and was covered in blood.

Her suffering only ended at dawn when her attacker was startled by a group of walkers on an orienteering outing when she managed to get out of the car.

Robert Quigley (27), Seskin View Road, Tallaght, Dublin, and living rough in Kerry for a year, had pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing to assaulting the woman causing her harm at Military Road, Glasamucky, Co Dublin; to falsely imprisoning her in Wicklow and Dublin, and to sexually assaulting her at Military Road on November 19th last.

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Quigley had masqueraded as a garda, Det Sgt Joseph O'Hara of Shankill station told the court. The woman feared she was going to be killed during the course of the dreadful night of bad weather in a dark remote location.

At one point of her ordeal, as Quigley tried to choke and then strangle her with a leather wheel brace holder, he told her he had come close to killing someone once, said Sgt O'Hara, reading from her statement.

Graphic photographs and medical reports handed into court detailed multiple injuries to her face including lacerations, stitching, fractured nose, damaged teeth and lips and eyelids as well as skull lacerations and neck bruising shortly after admission to hospital. Cable ties binding her wrists had left marks.

The woman, who cannot be identified, had been a student in Dublin and on the night she passed her exams she went socialising with friends and family in Harcourt Street and afterwards to a night club.

She left the night club shortly after 2.20am to look for a taxi and got in a back seat door of Quigley's parked car seeking to be brought home. She fell asleep in the back. When she woke up Quigley said he was a garda and she was in trouble as someone had placed cocaine in her bag.

He proceeded to tie her hands with cable ties. "She knew at that stage that something bad was going to happen to her and she kept talking and asking questions," Det Sgt O'Hara said.

In a victim statement to outline the psychiatric effect on her, read by Det Garda Amanda Timmins, the woman, who was in court, said before the attack she was "such a happy-go-lucky girl" but now she no longer trusted people. She thought she was going to be raped and would have preferred to have died.

Tom Rice, prosecuting, said the maximum penalties were life imprisonment for false imprisonment, 10 years for sexual assault and five years for the assault causing harm.

Judge Carroll Moran said this was "a very serious case" and he adjourned sentencing to July 31st in Limerick, remanding Quigley in continuing custody.