A woman told a court how she tried to fight off an intruder who broke into her bedroom in the middle of the night, as she feared what he would do to her young daughter if he managed to knock her unconscious.
The woman told gardaí she believed the man (33) was trying to knock her out so that he could sexually assault her teenage daughter who was sleeping with her in the room of their Co Cork home.
The man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, pleaded guilty to aggravated sexual assault of the woman, physical assault causing harm to both her and her daughter, false imprisonment of both of them and burglary at their home in Co Cork on January 12th, 2025.
Det Garda Paul Cullen of the Cork County Protective Services Unit told Ms Justice Siobhan Lankford at the Central Criminal Court sitting in Cork that gardaí were called to the house after a neighbour raised the alarm at 4.58am when she heard the teenage girl screaming for help.
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The neighbour ran out to help the girl who told her “there is a man beating my mam, that she and her mam were asleep in bed when a man came into their bedroom and started beating us”. The court heard that when the neighbour went to the woman’s house, she was hysterical and looking for her daughter.
Det Garda Cullen said the woman told gardaí that she woke up to hear their dog “skittering” and she realised there was a man in the room. She said she kicked out but the man started grappling with her and sexually assaulted her through her pyjamas.
The man punched her repeatedly in the forehead and left side of the face – so much she thought he was trying to knock her out, the court heard. He stopped punching her when he saw her daughter trying to escape and he followed the girl out on to the landing, Det Garda Cullen told the court.
The garda said the woman picked up a hurley that she had in the bedroom and struck the man on the head.
He fell down and she went downstairs to try to find her daughter who had fled the house.
A male neighbour called and found the intruder hiding in a green area and pointed him out to gardaí when they arrived. The man was arrested at the scene.
In a victim-impact statement, the woman said there were no words to convey the devastating impact that the man’s invasion of her home and violation of her body had on her. She was haunted by what happened that night.
“I am constantly trying to block out flashbacks. I don’t feel safe anywhere – I am now terrified of the dark, something I had never experienced or understood before – I am terrified of getting into my car in the dark, checking to see if there is a man following me – I am scared all the time now.
“I don’t even want to think about or share with anyone how I physically feel sick, dirty and ashamed, violated and I want to puke when I think about what happened to me in front of my daughter. There is no amount of showering I can do to make myself feel clean again.
“I feel disgusted and don’t feel my body is my own, that a part of me has been taken and I don’t know will I ever feel normal again. Something has changed in me forever and I feel so sad this has happened – all I try to do is get through the day as best I can and stay strong for my daughter.”
The woman’s daughter told in her victim-impact statement how she can’t walk anywhere in the dark on her own without fearing something is going to happen to her while she also found it very difficult to live with the memory of what happened that night.
“The fact that he broke into our house ... where I am supposed to be safe makes me even more scared about what can happen in other places. Now, I don’t feel safe in my own house so I can’t have friends over for sleepovers and I can’t sleep in my friend’s house.”
“I have also developed really bad trust issues with adults ... when people say everything is going to be okay and nothing is ever going to happen to me, I automatically assume that what they are saying is lies because something bad did happen.”
Det Garda Cullen said the accused had a previous conviction for rape and was on bail for that offence when he broke into the woman’s home. He is currently serving a sentence of more than 10 years for the earlier rape offence, he said.
Defence counsel Donal O’Sullivan SC pleaded for leniency, pointing out his client had entered a signed guilty plea at the first available opportunity, expressed remorse and while he had a previous conviction for rape, he had committed no such sexual crimes until he turned 31.
Ms Justice Lankford commended the mother and her daughter for their courage but said she wanted time to consider the appropriate penalty. She adjourned the case until January 23rd for sentence.
