Man jailed for raping former housemate
A Polish man has today been sentenced to seven years, with one year suspended, for raping his former housemate.
The 41-year-old man had been convicted by a Central Criminal Court jury last February.
He had pleaded not guilty to raping the then 19-year-old girl at his apartment in a Kerry town on July 5, 2010.
Garda Eamon Prenderville told Alexander Owens SC, prosecuting, that the man had been living with the victim and her parents in their family home in the same town and was due to move into his new apartment the next day.
He met the teenager that night while she was socialising with friends and she and a number of other men went to his new apartment where they continued to drink vodka.
Gda Prenderville said the other men had left and a short while later the teenager also tried to leave but the man pushed her down, removed her belt and trousers and raped her.
CCTV footage outside the apartment shows her leaving there at 7.15am the following morning and sitting on a footpath outside. The man is then seen coming out and dragging her back into the flat.
Gda Prenderville said about 30 minutes later she can be seen running from the flat in her underwear in the direction of her home.
The court heard that the man had been living in that area since 2007 and working in the building industry.
He has convictions in Poland for attempted burglary, assault causing grievous bodily harm, fraud and attempted theft.
He also has previous convictions here for possession of drugs and some road traffic offences.
A victim impact report was handed into court in which the woman outlined that she has been “considerably more nervous” since the attack.
Gda Prenderville agreed with Mr Owens that the man never admitted guilt and claimed that the sexual activity between them that day had been consensual.
Ciaran O’Loughlin SC, defending, told Mr Justice Garrett Sheehan that a probation and welfare report concluded that his client was at a medium risk of re-offending and asked the court to take into account that he had no previous convictions for sexual offences.
Mr Justice Sheehan imposed a sentence of seven years but suspended the last year.
He ordered that the sentence be backdated to February 17, 2011 when the man was put into custody.
