Cork rapist to be released as breach application adjourned

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

A Cork man convicted of rape was due for release while an application to revoke part of his suspended sentence remained unresolved. The proceedings were reported on 18 January 2019.

He initially denied the attack but later pleaded guilty to rape. He cannot be named to protect the victim’s anonymity and had no previous convictions.

On the night of 9 August 2013, he broke into his ex-partner’s home and repeatedly raped her during a five-hour ordeal. Armed with a hatchet, he threatened to kill her by driving them both into the sea and cut off her hair.

In October 2013, Mr Justice Garrett Sheehan imposed a ten-year sentence, suspending the final three years on condition that the man be of good behaviour for ten years. He also required him to engage with the Better Lives sex-offender treatment programme in custody.

On 18 January 2019, the Director of Public Prosecutions applied at the Central Criminal Court to revoke the suspension, alleging that he had not participated fully in the programme. Revocation would have meant serving the remaining three years. Dara Hayes BL, for the DPP, said it was not the State’s case that the man posed a public safety threat.

Senior probation officer Joseph McCarthy said the clinical team considered the suspension conditions unmet and that the man had not progressed sufficiently with offence-disclosure work. Mr Justice Paul McDermott noted some participation and said he suspected an inability, rather than a wilful refusal, to engage with the next programme level.

The judge left the sentence standing and adjourned the alleged breach application to March for a psychologist’s report. Defence counsel Blaise O’Carroll SC said the man had somewhere to go and would stay with his brother.