Man jailed for raping woman in Mayo town

Sarah-Jane Murphy

A Mayo man who threw a woman across a lane way to avoid being captured on CCTV before raping her has been jailed for six years.
The man (27), who cannot be named to protect his victim’s identity, pleaded guilty at the Central Criminal Court to raping the woman on May 16, 2015 in a Co Mayo town.
In her victim impact statement the 41-year-old woman told the court that she was afraid of being killed during the attack.
The court heard the man was disgusted with himself and described the victim as ‘a lovely woman who didn’t deserve to be treated like this’
Mr Justice Paul Butler imposed an eight-year sentence with the final two years suspended. He ordered the man to have no contact with the victim and not to go within 100 metres of her.
A local detective garda told John Gordon, SC, prosecuting, that the woman did some shopping and visited various bars and a bookies on May 16, 2015.
The pair, who were known to each other, met by chance in a pub in the town and shared a cigarette and some drinks before visiting a takeaway.
The detective garda told Mr Gordon the man then ‘coaxed his victim into a lane way and forced her down onto steps in a very aggressive manner’.
The court heard the man then picked the woman up and threw her to the opposite side of the lane way in order to avoid a CCTV camera capturing the incident. The man told her he had a blade and would use it if she did not do what he wanted.
He forced her to engage in a sexual act and then raped her, the detective garda said. Following the incident he told her: “Tell anyone about this and I’ll slash your throat.”
The victim dressed herself and made her way to a nearby pub where she told the landlady what had taken place. Soon afterwards she flagged down a passing garda patrol car and reported the rape. She had bruising to her face and whiplash from being thrown.
“Afterwards he ran off like the coward he is. I didn’t deserve to be raped. I’ll never forgive or forget what happened that night,” the woman told the court. She said that the man bit her lip during the incident, saying: “You wouldn’t do that to a dog”.
Michael Bowman SC, defending, said the man made full admissions to gardaí and entered a guilty plea at an early stage.
“He is from a decent family and is now marked out forever in a small community as a rapist; that’s a significant stigma,” Mr Bowman said.