A violent sexual offender believed to be serving the longest defined-term prison sentence in Ireland should be banned from the Republic for decades when he is released, one of his victims has said.
Ruth Maxwell was walking to a Luas stop in south Dublin to go to work in 2016 when Slawomir Gierlowski put a hunting knife to her throat. While she managed to break free, and was not sexually assaulted, she suffered serious injuries after pulling the knife away from her.
He had items such as duct tape and cable ties and gardaí believe he was planning to restrain Ms Maxwell until she managed to escape. However, Gierlowski carried out other attacks, which gardaí believe were all sexually motivated and he sexually assaulted some of his victims.
Ms Maxwell said because Gierlowski, a Polish roofer living on Galtymore Road, Drimnagh, Dublin, was now serving a sentence of 34½ years, he should be deported on release and banned from returning to the Republic for the same term of his total jail sentences. She told RTÉ’s Liveline on Monday while she believed, under the law, that no EU citizen could be banned for life from any EU member state, they could be banned from countries for set periods.
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“I would like to see him deported and for the period of time to be the collective sentencing that he’s given at that final trial, which turns out to be 34½ years,” she said. “So he’ll be 59, maybe a little earlier, when he’s due for release. And I would like to see the guards put forward to the Department of Justice; that he’s deported for 34½ years.”
In May, 2018, father of two Gierlowski was sentenced to 18½ years for premeditated and random attacks on three women in 2011, 2015 and 2016 at locations around Clondalkin in south Dublin. Two of the attacks involved a sexual assault and took place late at night as the women walked home after a night out.
The first attack took place late at night on September 11th 2011. The man attacked the victim as she was walking home from a night out, dragging her to the ground and sexually assaulting her. She managed to get away from him, but he caught her and began punching her repeatedly around the face.
On September 3rd 2015, a second woman was walking home late at night when he came up behind her and put a leather belt around her neck and pulled her backwards to the ground. He wrapped duct tape around her face and hands before sexually assaulting her. This woman told the court she thought she was going to die during the attack, saying: “I thought I was dying. I had gone quite light headed, like I was passing out. I felt it was for the best. I didn’t know what was going to happen.”
The third attack was carried out in broad daylight on the early morning of May 16th 2016. The victim, Ms Maxwell, was walking along Knockmeenagh Lane, Clondalkin, to the nearby Luas stop when the man, armed with a hunting knife, put his arm around her neck and began to pull her backwards.
Ms Maxwell told the court that she thought the man was going to slit her throat and she grabbed the blade to stop that happening, causing the knife to cut tendons in three of her fingers. She managed to get out from under the knife and began screaming and he ran off.
Gierlowski was identified after detectives used CCTV cameras to track a white van spotted near the scene of the 2016 attack back to the road he lived on.
After his arrest, gardaí matched his DNA to blood and semen samples taken from the two earlier crime scenes. Tests on blood traces on a jacket seized by gardaí from his bedroom in June 2016 revealed it was the third victim’s blood.
Gierlowski was last year found guilty by a jury in a Dublin Circuit Criminal Court trial of assault causing harm, false imprisonment and production of an article in relation to the attack on the young mother at Ballymount Park on May 30th 2011. He was sentenced for that crime last week and his time in prison extended by six years as a result.
