TWO MEN who sexually assaulted a young Tipperary woman have been jailed for five years by Mr Justice Patrick McCarthy at the Central Criminal Court.
The teenage victim initially claimed she was forced into a car in Clonmel and taken to a quiet, rural place near Cahir and raped by one man but later admitted to gardaí this wasn’t true.
Detective Garda Tom Kelly told prosecuting counsel, Brendan Grehan SC, she made the false claim because she said she was “ashamed” of having had consensual sex with the man whom she had earlier approached and kissed on the street.
Constantin Mariscariu (24) of The Avenue, Barnora, Cahir, Co Tipperary and Ionat Hoinaru (30), a single father of a nine-year-old son, and of no fixed abode, pleaded guilty to sexual assault of the woman on March 16th, 2008.
Both men, who are from Romania, admitted to gardaí that they forced the woman to perform oral sex on them in the room where she had had sex with the third man who also had been originally arrested after her false claim.
She has accepted €5,000 compensation offered as a token of his remorse by Mariscariu who has been on bail.
Hoinaru, who has no permanent address here but worked around Munster with a Cashel-based funfair operation, has been in custody in Limerick Prison but was subjected to racist attacks and moved to another jail. Neither man had previous convictions.
Mr Justice McCarthy called it “a nasty and opportunistic crime” and said they had “taken advantage of her in a very gross manner.” He also criticised Hoinaru for “obnoxiously” telling gardaí the woman was a prostitute. He imposed one-year post release supervision on Mariscariu and added both men to the sex offenders’ register.
Det Garda Kelly said the three men were filmed on CCTV footage outside O’Keefe’s pub in Clonmel where they all met up. The woman asked the man she later had sex with if she could go with him “to your place and you can drive me home in the morning”.
Hoinaru told gardaí “she was jumping all over” this man on the drive to what was described as “a rough barn-type accommodation” in a rural area outside Cahir.
They all enjoyed music and dancing before she went to a bedroom with him. Det Garda Kelly said she used a condom she had in her bag because the man didn’t have one and the sexual activity between them didn’t last long.
When this man returned from the bathroom he found the bedroom door locked with Mariscariu and Hoinaru inside. He heard the woman being asked for oral sex and shouting back “No, no, no”.
Mr Grehan told Mr Justice McCarthy that the maximum sentence in view of the teenager’s age was 10 years and the Director of Public Prosecutions considered the case to be in the middle-range for sentencing in view of all the circumstances, including that no gratuitous violence was involved.