Man with severe mental illness jailed for raping ex-partner
A 20-year-old Kildare man suffering from a severe mental illness has received a nine-year sentence with three suspended for raping his ex-partner in their apartment almost two years ago.
The man was convicted by a Central Criminal Court jury last December of two rape counts and one oral rape count on a date between February 24 and 25, 2009.
He contested the rape charges but had pleaded guilty to two counts of assaulting the woman causing her harm at the apartment on February 23, and on a date between February 24 and 25, 2009.
A garda revealed that the woman had been holding the couple’s baby when the man struck her on February 23 and caused her to hit the child’s head. She brought the baby to hospital but the child had sustained no injuries.
The garda told Ms Mary Ellen Ring SC, prosecuting, that the victim had asked her partner to deal with his violent tendencies numerous times before the incident.
The garda said the woman went to bed on the night of the sex attacks, leaving her partner in charge of the baby in another room.
The man had trouble settling the child, entered the bedroom and got into an argument with his victim about their baby’s care.
He pushed the woman back, put his hand over her mouth and nose and hit her on her face and left upper arm.
The woman later told gardaí that she tried to call emergency services when the man left the room briefly after assaulting her, but could not get through in time before he returned.
The couple continued their argument before the man made his partner perform oral sex.
The woman spat on the bed before leaving the bedroom, going into the sitting room and asking the man’s cousin, who was present playing video games, if she could use his phone to call for help.
She got through to a garda station and made an assault complaint but had to leave the sitting room again when her partner arrived to bring her back into the bedroom.
He then barricaded her and the baby in the room by pushing a mattress and other items against the door and raped her twice before falling asleep.
The garda told Ms Ring that colleagues went to the address to investigate the complaint about 40 minutes after the phone call but were unable to gain access to the apartment.
He said the woman was able to tend to her child during the night and early the next morning because she had bottles in the room and managed to escape with the baby into the sitting room the next day to call gardaí.
She threw the front door keys down to gardaí through an open window so they would not wake her partner and then ran in her pyjamas with her child to the nearest garda station as officers went into the bedroom to question the man about her assault allegation.
The victim made rape allegations at the garda station and was later brought to Rotunda Hospital’s Sexual Assault Unit, where a doctor found bruising and tenderness on her body and genital area.
The garda revealed that the man was admitted to a psychiatric hospital for treatment after the incident and on his arrest for interview he admitted assaulting his partner but denied raping her.
He agreed with Mr Roderick O’Hanlon SC, defending, that the man had remained on bail until his sentence hearing and had not come to adverse attention.
He further agreed that there had been tragedy in the man’s family background.
Mr Justice Barry White told the man he had destroyed the relationship with his victim, shattered her life and future ambitions and ruined his own life and that of his young child.
He said he was “acutely conscious” of the man’s mental health problems but added that these “cannot excuse criminality, albeit in very limited circumstances, which do not apply in this case”.
The judge suspended three years of the man’s nine year sentence taking into consideration his previous good character and young age at the time.
A psychiatrist doctor told Mr O’Hanlon at the sentence hearing that he had been seeing the man once a week for the past two years and had prescribed him very strong medicine to treat his “severe paranoid psychotic illness”.
Dr Alan Byrne revealed that the man had been referred to his hospital before the incident but only attended for one visit.
The doctor told Mr O’Hanlon that at this point he had been concerned about the man’s behaviour.
He said the man was then admitted to hospital after the incident and diagnosed with a psychotic illness which requires the “most severe” medication available to modify a patient’s behaviour.
Dr Byrne said the man is a “changed person” since going on the medication and he is showing more positive and appropriate behaviour.
He said the man’s prognosis should be good on this medication but he requires constant supervision and regular blood tests because the medicine can cause physical harm.
Dr Byrne confirmed the man was fit to plead in a criminal trial but that he had been “extraordinarily unwell and paranoid” prior to his hospital admittance.
The doctor told Ms Ring that his patient has no clear recollection of what happened on the night and cannot accept what was said at trial.
Dr Byrne said he had been aware of the allegations but not the details because the man had not been able to say what they were.
He added that he knew there were psychiatric services in prison but was concerned about his patient since he needs regular blood testing.
Dr Byrne agreed with Mr Justice White that it was a “very well known phenomena” that people with such mental health problems can reach a position where they feel they can abandon their medication and relapse as a result.
He confirmed that the man will need monitoring for life.
Mr O’Hanlon told the judge that his client deeply regretted physically assaulting his ex-partner and has attempted to deal with his psychiatric difficulties.
