A man jailed for raping and threatening his wife

This report is a localnews.ie summary based on public court reporting and records; sources are listed below.

A man received a 12-year sentence for raping his wife, with the final two years suspended, at Dublin Central Criminal Court on 25 July 2016. The custodial portion was 10 years. Ms Justice Isobel Kennedy imposed lesser sentences for the other offences, to run concurrently with the rape sentence.

In June 2016, a jury convicted him of raping his wife in their home, threatening to cut her face and threatening to kill her over the phone. The rape and threat to cut her face occurred on 25 May 2014. The telephone threat followed the next day.

He had previously pleaded guilty to attempting to cause serious harm to his wife and assaulting her mother. Those offences occurred during a hammer attack outside the mother’s Dublin home on 7 August 2014.

The offences arose during the breakdown of his marriage in 2014. Ms Justice Isobel Kennedy described the assaults as “cowardly” and “brutal”. The man was the second person convicted of marital rape in Ireland since rape within marriage was criminalised in 1990. The proceedings were reported on 25 July 2016.