Judge jails rapist for putting women through ‘night of horror’

A man who broke into his ex-partner’s home before repeatedly raping her and her teenage foster daughter has been jailed for 18 years.

The 37-year-old Limerick man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, threatened the child’s foster mother with a knife during the night long ordeal which only ended when he fell asleep the next morning.

Mr Justice Patrick McCarthy described the case as one of the most serious sexual offence cases that has come before him.

He said the incidents could only be described as “a night of horror” during which the man subjected his former partner and a teenage girl to “prolonged abuse of the vilest kind”.

The judge said he did not put significance on the fact the man had been drinking whiskey and taking cocaine and noted that he had been in “full command of his senses”.

He highlighted that the two victims had been coerced and subjected to repeated rapes and sexual assaults after the man had broken into his ex-partners home.

The man pleaded guilty at the Central Criminal Court to six counts of rape at a house in Co Limerick on the night of September 10th, 2016.

‘Great difficulties’

Garda John Moriarty told Paul Greene SC, prosecuting, that the then 16-year-old victim did not submit a victim impact statement. He said the young woman was “getting on okay day to day” but has had great difficulties.

In a victim impact statement, read out by Mr Greene, the man’s ex partner described feeling to blame for what happened to the teenage victim, but said she believed the man would have killed her had she spoken up while he held the knife to her throat.

“I hate him with a vengeance for what he did to us”, she said, adding that the man left her “shattered” physically and mentally.

Garda Moriarty agreed with Mark Nicholas SC, defending, that his client had been highly intoxicated on arrest and admitted that he had hurt his former partner physically and sexually.

The garda agreed that the man was tearful and upset during his interviews when details of what he did to the teenage girl were read to him.

Mr Nicholas told Mr Justice McCarthy that he was instructed to apologise to the injured parties.

Counsel said the man had taken a significant amount of cocaine and whiskey and said this suggested he was “outside of normal thinking” on the night.

He asked the judge to take into consideration his client’s guilty plea and previous good character. He asked the judge to be as lenient as he could.