A DONEGAL MAN who was jailed for seven years for repeatedly raping a teenage school girl when she was too drunk to resist has had his conviction upheld.
When sentencing the man at the Central Criminal Court in January 2020, Ms Justice Tara Burns said that the man, now aged 29, treated the teenager “like a dog” when he raped her in a field.
She said he took advantage of her half interest in him and her drunkenness to subject her to vile and despicable attacks.
The victim, now aged in her 20s, told the Central Criminal Court that the attacks changed her from being a happy, trusting girl who enjoyed life to a fearful traumatised adult who struggles with panic attacks.
The man, who cannot be named to protect the identity of the victim, denied four counts of rape at two locations in the county on a night in July 2016. After a trial in January 2020, a jury returned unanimous guilty verdicts on all counts.
The court heard that the man had met the victim a short time earlier and they had kissed.
On the night of the rapes, the victim and her friend planned a camping trip and invited a number of friends but nobody was available to join them.
The man and his friend were contacted and the four met, procured two bottles of vodka and began drinking in a field. They split into pairs and the man and the teenager kissed.
At one point she fell back and the man got on top of her. She tried to get up and he pushed her back. The victim said no but he didn’t listen and raped her.
He then turned her over and anally raped her and then repeated these actions again and again, whispering “good girl” to her. The victim was left with bruising all over her body.
In appealing the conviction, the man’s lawyers had submitted that the trial judge did not address the closing speech of prosecution counsel in her charge to the jury.
The appellant claimed prosecution counsel went “further than he should” in appearing to attribute views to a nurse who gave evidence at the trial which the nurse had not expressly stated and was arguing for jurors to adopt that interpretation.
In returning judgement, Justice George Birmingham said “the manner in which the trial judge dealt with the matter was to refer to what had been said by prosecution and defence counsel in their closing speeches and she thought it was important that there be clarity as to what the nurse had said”.
Justice Birmingham said that the three-judge court was “satisfied that there is no criticism to be made of the way the trial judge dealt with the matter and that she herself did not get involved in the issue but read from the transcript”.
The judge said that the second ground of appeal concerned a question of whether or not the complainant had “shouted” or “said” the word “stop” when the appellant attacked her.
The judge said there had been no direct evidence at the trial to say that the word “stop” had been shouted and the appellant submitted that a Garda interview note of the word being “shouted” should not have been put in front of the jury.
In rejecting this ground of appeal, Justice Birmingham said it had always been open to the defendant in interview to say he never heard the complainant shout or say stop and claim that he did not hear it, because it was not said.
A further ground of appeal concerned two Facebook messages exchanged between the man and the one-time best friend of the appellant that were permitted to go before the jury, one of which read: “If she was uncomfortable why did she come back to mine?
Another read: “Tell me the truth, why was [the complainant] crying?”
Justice Birmingham said that the message acknowledged that the complainant was crying and that this being “admissible” was against the appellant’s interest.
However, Justice Birmingham noted that it had been the appellant himself who sought to introduce Facebook messages and that “having introduced the Facebook messages, the appellant was not in a strong position to argue for the exclusion of other messages which he found disadvantageous”.
Mr Justice Birmingham said the three-judge court had not been persuaded to uphold any ground of appeal and would dismiss it outright.
In a victim impact statement the woman told her attacker: “You saw that I was getting drunk, starting to slur my speech. You saw I was more vulnerable. You were able to take control of me”.
After the attack the woman was falling around drunk and the man brought her back to his house and raped her twice again. She doesn’t remember going back to this house.
In her statement she said: “You brought me back to violate me all over again. I couldn’t move. I was so drunk and in so much shock that physically I was there but mentally I was gone.”
She said she experienced shame and fear during a medical examination during which she “cried out in pain”.
She said that she has been traumatised every single day by the attacks.
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