Drug abuser with 153 previous convictions jailed over sexual assault of woman at Luas stop

A chronic drug abuser, with 153 previous convictions, has been jailed for three years by a Central Criminal Court judge over a degrading sexual assault on a woman at a Luas stop.

Sentencing the 35-year-old, who cannot be named to protect the identity of the victim, Mr Justice Paul McDermott said the woman was sexually assaulted in the course of a robbery and felt compelled to undress to show she had nothing hidden on her person.

The judge said: “It is most humiliating and degrading to be left in that condition. It’s how the robbery was carried out that elevates this case to a level that is nasty and frightening, either to experience on the part of the victim or to view by people living in the neighbourhood. This all culminated in a very nasty violent explosion against the victim at a Luas station.”

Before delivering the sentence, Mr Justice McDermott said the victim was a vulnerable person at the time who was put in fear and subjected to force. He said a disagreement about drugs had ensued whereby €200 was taken from the victim.

He said she suffered injuries from the attack and was rescued by a local man who chased off her assailants with a golf club.

The accused, of no fixed abode, pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting the woman at Drimnagh Luas Stop, Davitt Road, Dublin 12 on January 26th, 2023. He had also pleaded guilty to stealing and putting the victim in fear of being subjected to force on the same occasion.

The man’s co-accused, a 49-year-old woman, who also could not be named to protect the identity of the victim, was jailed last January for three years at the Central Criminal Court after pleading guilty to sexual assault and robbery on the same occasion.

In a victim impact statement read to the court, the woman said she has since developed a fear of going outside, keeps getting flashbacks and is anxious of people, places and things. She said she is not eating or sleeping and has “thoughts of self-harm” since the incident. She said she is seeing a mental health nurse through the Peter McVerry Trust.

The victim said she had a full relapse into the abuse of hard drugs and has had to move addresses three times since the attack. She said she keeps washing and cleaning herself and believes this is due to trauma from the event.

“It has caused me so much pain and has broken me physically, mentally and spiritually,” she concluded, adding that she is currently on a detox from drugs.

Mr Justice McDermott noted that the man held the woman’s legs apart while the woman defendant searched her vagina. He added there was “a pair of them in it” and the sexual assault could not have been carried out without the man’s assistance.

“Essentially the pair of them abandoned any social constraints or norms. She was lucky that someone took the initiative and intervened to put a stop to it. There was a vicious element to this,” he added.

The judge said the offences occurred in circumstances where it was essentially intended to rob the victim but that sexual assault became “part in a strange way of the robbery process”.

The court heard that the defendant, who has been homeless for the majority of his adult life, has 153 previous convictions. They mainly relate to public order offences but also include possession of knives, theft and assaulting a police officer. None of his previous convictions are of a sexual nature.

The judge set the headline sentence at six years. In mitigation, the judge noted the defendant’s mental health problems which date back to his teenage years and his history of schizophrenia. The man was sentenced to four years in prison with the final year suspended for a period of three years. It was backdated to April 30th, 2023.