The woman at the centre of the C case describes her ordeal/Edited extracts from her interview on the Pat Kenny show:'I said I . . . have to go into the court.'
I have to see his face and to see him for the last time. I have to see how long he got sentenced for. It kind of gave me a bit of relief when he got 21 years and to see the other victim’s family there so sad and then him saying when he was walking out of the courtroom saying ‘I didn’t do it! I didn’t do it! Don’t believe anything they say.’
“But if he was innocent he wouldn’t have done what he did to me and got me pregnant.
“I wouldn’t have had to go to England and get rid of his baby that he got me pregnant on . . .
“It has been living with me, still to this day it’s living with me. There is still stuff to this day with nightmares, I can’t sleep and I’m on medication. I’m still living in fear, fear all the time. I’m only out of hospital since Tuesday . . .
“No one understands how you feel, how a rape victim feels after being raped. It never goes away no matter how people say it does. It lives with you constantly. Fears and everything that goes with, the nightmares, the whole lot . . .
“I was a child; I was babysitting his kids at the time actually . . .
“It was actually my first time ever babysitting for him and he said he was dropping me home after he came home. He was drunk and I asked his wife could I stay there and she said ‘yeah’ but he said ‘no, she’s going home, she’s going home’.
“But then he drove past the site and I said ‘where are you going?’ He said he was going up the road to get matches and smokes. And then he pulled into the side of the road and dragged me into the back of the van and raped me and started punching me around. Then he stopped, got himself together, jumped into the front of the van and drove off again and did it again. Then drove off again and then did it again about 20 times that night maybe . . .
“I tried to escape. I got out of the van and he ran after me, grabbed me by the throat and threw me back in the van and raped me again . . . Then after he was finished raping me he dropped me home, put a knife up to my throat and said if I told anybody he’d kill me.
“Then it was some man who came forward. He found out and went up to the police station and they came down to the caravan and took me out of there . . .
“The nightmare still continues with me going to England to have the abortion. I remember flying over on the plane with social workers to have the abortion . . .
“I didn’t understand what was happening. The foster mother took me out of school because I was getting sick constantly. She brought me to the doctor and the doctor gave me a wee urine sample that you wee into. So I did that for the doctor and he asked me to go back out to the waiting room and then never told me anything.
“The foster mother and the doctor stayed in the room and the next morning I woke up there were social workers at the table and I didn’t know what it was and I was like yeah, I thought I was getting the baby out.”
You thought there would be a living baby there?
“Afterwards yeah. Then I remember waking up from the abortion and screaming and screaming and crying with the pain so they gave me another injection to fall back to sleep, well I don’t know, I fell back to sleep afterwards. I woke up then and I was in no pain so I asked for the baby and they told me there was no baby . . .
“I wouldn’t have wanted to keep it; I would have put it up for adoption or something. No I wouldn’t have wanted to keep the baby but I would have liked for it to be put for adoption . . .
“I still, still to this day I’m still suffering. I went to get a death certificate done for the baby. I named her Shannon. So, like, that was pretty hard for me to do as well. I went away for a week and I did that. That was pretty hard for me to do as well. But I had to have some dignity to say that that child was still there . . .
“I’ve tried to kill myself. I don’t know how many times I’ve tried to kill myself. But I have a little five- year-old son now so he’s keeping me, he is the best thing that has ever happened me now . . .
“I knew he [Simon McGinley] got 12 years [for her rape] because I was in the court, but I wasn’t actually in the courtroom. I was in a little room talking to the judge from a camera.
“There was somebody there with me and the judge called me over to the camera and said he pleaded guilty and the judge said ‘do you have anything to say?’ and I said ‘yeah, I hope he rots in hell’. But then he got out obviously and raped again so that was pretty hard to deal with as well . . .
“I still to this day live in fear. My mother actually stayed with me and my brother last night, she’s too terrified to stay in her own home because of the threats. We’ve had the police up and the whole lot and giving statements about the phone calls. I actually got some phone calls myself around 2 and 3 o’clock this morning, threatening phone calls. A man’s voice saying ‘we’re gonna kill you, we’re gonna kill you’ and hanging up and ringing off . . .
“He ruined my life and I’m still coming to terms to live with that. My life is destroyed. I can’t go out there and meet a fella, I don’t go outside the door and I mostly stay in the apartment. When I leave the apartment it is to bring the little fella to school and then go and collect him and then collect my money from the post office and my disability money from the post office and do the shopping.
“My friend across the road, my two very good friends are very, very good to me. They bring [me] in the car shopping and bring me and my son out of the apartment, because it’s not fair on the child that my child has to suffer this way as well because I’m suffering . . .
“I was shocked [on hearing of McGinley’s rape of an 86-year-old woman] . I just started roaring crying, like especially to an old woman, I just started roaring and crying. I was in shock. My whole body just went into shock that you could do that to an 86-year-old woman. I was roaring and crying. I was in shock and I could only picture what he was doing to me and then picturing what he did to her, the same thing...
*The law has taken its course and 21 years is at the upper end of the sentences that are handed out…* Yeah h.
“He’s getting help in the prison. Who helped me when I was going through this? No one. No one offered me counselling. I was just shoved from one children’s home to another children’s home to another children’s home. I know the social workers took me into care and all but my father ended up killing himself . . .
“I was a child, but my family is still suffering along with me.
“He’s doing a life sentence, we’re doing a bigger one. I’m doing a bigger one and that poor old lady is doing a bigger life sentence living with this all. We’re living with this all the time. He’s just living with that he raped someone, it’s a big wow woo in his head. He doesn’t care about how the people he hurt are suffering . . .
“Hopefully please God that I will get over it. I will get over it. I will get over it eventually but it will take time and help but I will get over it please God . . .
“Seeing him walking out and saying ‘I’m not guilty, don’t believe whatever they say, I didn’t do it, I didn’t do it.’ It made me feel like I wanted to vomit inside the courtroom, looking at his face again.
“I had to go to the court to see. I just got an urge to come over me and I went. I didn’t care, I wasn’t dressed up and I just went. I jumped on a bus, and I rarely take the bus, and then got on the Luas and went to the court, went in and seen him sitting there with the guard. Then saying to his family after ‘I got 21 years, I got 21 years’ whispering to his family . . .
“I hope [I will find peace of mind].”