Man, 63, who admitted raping 'vulnerable' woman jailed for five years
A man who admitted to raping a woman who could not remember what had happened the next morning has been jailed for five years.
The 63-year-old man, who cannot be named to protect the identity of the victim, pleaded guilty at the Central Criminal Court to rape at a location in Co Meath on August 11, 2015.
Mr Justice Alexander Owens sentenced the man to five years imprisonment.
He further ordered that the man undergo three years of post-release supervision on strict conditions, including that he totally abstain from alcohol as far as possible.
The court heard that both the man and his victim were alcoholics and were staying in the same house.
On the night in question they were drinking together and both consumed two bottles of wine each.
After she went to bed, the man came into her room and had sex with her without her consent.
She awoke the next morning with no memory of what happened to find him in her bed and his body rubbing against her.
A condom wrapper was found floating in the ensuite toilet in her room.
When told this by gardaí the man admitted that he kept condoms in his wallet and would flush them after using them.
Gardaí questioned the man without telling him that they had no account of the incident from the victim.
The man admitted that the woman had become “dozy” and that he planned to assault her by getting a condom, going to his room, and having sex with her.
The man has two previous convictions for sexual assault dating back to 2010 and 1994 respectively, one of which was for groping the buttocks of his landlord's teenage daughter while she was asleep and he was drunk.
Mr Justice Owens noted that the man had reduced alcohol intake to a minimal amount, though he said in his view he should give it up entirely.
He said the man's sexual offending was inexorably linked to alcohol.
He said the man was of limited intellectual ability, had cognitive difficulties and was impulsive.
He said the man had learned nothing from his previous offending and that the victim in this case was a “vulnerable” woman.
Mr Justice Owens said in the absence of mitigation he would have considered an appropriate headline sentence to be 10 years imprisonment.
He deducted three years from this notional sentence as a result of the man's remorse, his efforts to rehabilitate and his age, and deducted a further two years as a result of his guilty plea.
Mr Justice Owens said it was very difficult to justify suspending any part of the sentence as the man had previous abused the leniency of the court.
He backdated the sentence to July 1, last, the day he first went into custody on this matter.
