A MAN has been convicted of raping and sexually assaulting his former girlfriend in her Co Offaly home after tying up her boyfriend and attacking him with a knife and baton.
The Polish national, aged 43, had pleaded not guilty at the Central Criminal Court to rape and oral rape on November 25th, 2007. He had pleaded guilty to assault causing harm to the complainant’s boyfriend on the same date.
The jury on Friday last returned guilty verdicts on charges of him entering the house as a trespasser while armed with a bladed weapon and a weapon capable of discharging a noxious liquid gas, false imprisonment of both the complainant and her boyfriend, aggravated sexual assault and raping her with a vibrator on November 25th, 2007.
The jury of three women and nine men took more than six hours to reach its guilty verdict on the final two counts on day 10 of the trial on Saturday.
Mr Justice Peter Charleton thanked the jurors for their service and excused them from jury duty for 10 years.
He remanded the man in continuing custody and adjourned sentencing to the end of November.
During the trial the 28-year-old complainant, who is also a Polish national, told Éanna Mulloy SC, prosecuting, that the accused had threatened to cut her boyfriend’s penis off and murder them both before he raped her.
She said she woke up that night after she was hit in the head and she said she could smell something in the air “like someone had just sprayed something”.
She turned on the light and found the accused beating up her boyfriend with a baton.
He then slashed the man with a knife and tied up his arms and legs before he sexually assaulted her while forcing her boyfriend to watch.
She said the accused later went into another bedroom with her where he raped her after threatening to kill both her and her boyfriend.
“He said he was going to kill my boyfriend first and make me watch. He was going to cut his penis off and then break my neck,” the woman told Mr Mulloy.
“He then said he would maybe kill me first and pack my clothes to make it look like I was leaving my boyfriend and then he would kill him so it would look like he had killed me and then killed himself.”
She said the accused man told her it was also his intention to burn down their house after he had killed them.
He told her he had contacted her friends that morning and told them that they were getting back together so people would think she was planning to leave her boyfriend.
“I did not want to scream or shout because I knew my boyfriend could hear me and there would be nothing he could do about it. I didn’t want to make it any worse for him,” the woman told Mr Mulloy.
She said after he had sex with her the accused lay beside her and kissed and hugged her.
The woman told Mr Mulloy that the accused had told her that he had been in the couple’s home a few times unbeknownst to them after he took her house keys from her handbag and made copies of them.