Woman ‘prayed to die’ during rapes by convicted murderer

A convicted murderer has received a 15-year prison sentence for raping a woman in her home nine years ago.

Throughout the 20-minute attack, Andrius Lipinskas (41) repeatedly punched the woman in the head and face and threatened to kill her.

He orally raped her three times. The attack only ended when the woman bit down on his penis and pushed him back after he had put his trousers down around his ankles.

Lipinskas fell back and the woman, who had been stripped from the waist down, ran out to a street and into a neighbouring house.

The Central Criminal Court heard that she locked herself into an upstairs bedroom. The homeowner believed there was an intruder in her house and called gardaí­ who arrived minutes later to find the victim in a hysterical state.

Lipinskas, formerly of Bayside Square South, Sutton, had pleaded not guilty to three counts of oral rape and one of aggravated sexual assault at a place in Dublin in August 2010.

After a 12-day trial, a jury returned unanimous guilty verdicts on Wednesday after some three hours of deliberations.

Det Garda Carla Creegan on Thursday told Mr Justice Tony Hunt that Lipinskas had received a 15-year prison sentence in 1998 for murder committed on November 16th, 1995 in Lithuania.

Dangerous

Justice Hunt said Lipinskas was a very dangerous individual who he believed should be excluded from Ireland on the basis of public policy.

“He shouldn’t be here at all,” he said.

The judge suspended the last 2½ years of the 15-year prison term on condition that Lipinskas leave the State on his release from custody and not return without leave of the court.

The court heard that just before 9pm on the evening of the attack, the woman arrived home from a friend’s house. She was entering her home and had just disarmed the house alarm inside the front door, when Lipinskas pushed his way in.

He began punching her and repeatedly told her, “I’m going to fucking kill you and you’re going to suck my cock”. He raped her downstairs, then dragged her upstairs by her hair and raped her on the stairs.

He then dragged her into her bedroom and raped her a third time, continually saying he was going to kill her. The woman begged him not to kill her and said she would do whatever he wanted.

‘Begging’

In a victim impact statement read by the woman, who is in her 30s, she said the attack changed her life forever and took her away her sense of safety in her own home.

“You were the only one who heard me begging, please don’t kill me. I had to beg for my life,” she said. “I prayed and prepared to die. The more I fought, the more aggressive and violent you became.”

She said she had spent the last nine years waiting for “this moment”.

“It has taken a very long time, a lot of counselling. When I heard the word guilty, I felt vindicated,” she added.

The court heard that Lipinskas booked a ferry ticket to France two days after the attack and left two days later, ultimately travelling back to Lithuania. He was linked to the attack after his DNA profile showed up on saliva from an unsmoked cigarette left at the house and was eventually extradited for trial.