A Cork man who raped an Australian tourist and was described as "a danger and a menace to society and women" has been jailed for 18 years.
Johnny English (26), of 8 Streamhill, Cork, had pleaded guilty at the Central Criminal Court last March during his trial to raping an Australian tourist (26) on November 26th, 2002, at the Geography Department of University College Cork.
Mr Justice White said English is "a most definite and serious threat to the women of Cork", and said he had been "most perturbed" to learn that English had carried out two further offences of a sexual nature against two separate women in Cork just days after he raped the Australian woman.
"You are, perhaps, someone deserving of a life sentence," Mr Jusitce White said. He noted, however, that Mr Patrick Mac Entee SC, counsel for English, had pleaded for a chance of rehabilitation for him, admitting that he had been "out of control" at the time.
Mr Justice White said he had also been asked to take into consideration the unfortunate and sad childhood English had experienced and that his brother's suicide after he raped the Australian woman had engendered in him "a genuine desire to reform."
"I have doubts about the bona fides of Mr English's intentions," Mr Justice White said. He noted that English had not pleaded guilty until after his trial started and after he had obliged his victim to relive her ordeal in court.
Balancing the background of English with the impact his crime had on the victim, he suspended the last five years of the 18 years on condition that English avails of psychiatric counselling. The sentence is to start from March this year when he pleaded guilty.
At the sentence hearing last week Detective Garda Denis Lynch said English had tampered with locks in toilet cubicles of a Cork pub and a takeaway and assaulted two women there on December 6th, 2002, 11 days after the rape.
Det Gda Lynch said English had a total of 27 previous convictions, four of which involved attacks on women. He was jailed in May 2003 for falsely imprisoning and attacking the two women in December 2002.
He had also had been jailed for four years in 1995 for sexual assault on a woman in 1993 and received a six months suspended sentence on March 24th, 2001, when he robbed a mobile phone from a prostitute working in Cork city centre.