Man guilty of raping former partner
The 30-year-old, who cannot be named for legal reasons, pleaded not guilty to raping his former partner at their Cork City home on September 8, 2013.
He pleaded guilty in the Central Criminal Court to one count of sexually assaulting her by forcing her to give him oral sex and to assault causing harm at the same address on July 10, 2013.
Following a week-long trial, the jury returned a guilty verdict on the rape count after nearly four and a half hours of deliberating.
After the verdict was handed down, the jury heard the man has 16 previous convictions, including several convictions for rape, aggravated sexual assault, and sexual assault. He is currently serving a 12-year sentence.
Mr Justice Paul Coffey will sentence him for these offences on May 8.
At the start of the trial, Thomas Creed SC, prosecuting, told the jury that the couple met in 2010 and had a son together a few years later.
The woman, 26, said that, on the night of July 10, 2013, she and her partner went to bed as usual, with their 15-month-old son sleeping in the next room. She said she was drifting off when, without warning, he grabbed her by her hair and forced her head between his legs, shouting “suck my cock bitch” repeatedly.
“I was terrified,” the woman said. “I had gone from sleeping in my own bed to being completely attacked. I didn’t know what was going on.”
The man forced her to perform oral sex, before she managed to escape to the bathroom. However, after hearing her son crying, she ran into his bedroom. The man followed her in and assaulted her, hitting her head off a bed in the room while their son cried in his cot.
Afterwards, she struggled to comfort the child.
“I was so scared and so terrified. I couldn’t even sing ‘Twinkle Twinkle’ to calm him down,” she said. “I couldn’t get the words out.”
The couple broke up and on the morning of September 8, 2013, the woman and their son went to the man’s home so they could work out a maintenance and visitation agreement.
The woman told the court the boy had fallen asleep in his buggy and they were discussing the agreement when the man said: “Can we just fuck and I’ll sign whatever agreement you want?”
She became “uneasy” and said she wanted to leave, but the man told her: “You’re going to go upstairs, you’re going to strip off and we’re going to fuck.”
The woman said she begged him not to do it and asked him: “Are you actually going to rape me?”
“Some part of me thought if I said that to him, it would shock him out of doing anything,” she told the court. “But he didn’t even flinch.”
During the attack, she vomited twice, but each time the man led her back into the bedroom and continued to rape her. Afterwards, she said, he made her a cup of coffee before walking her and their child outside to meet her parents.
The man told gardaí the woman asked him to have sex with him to help her get over the July incident.
