A 32-year-old man who raped and battered a woman in April 2002 in a Cork suburb has been jailed for four years by Mr Justice Paul Butler at the Central Criminal Court.
Paul Buckley, Baker's Road, Gurranabraher, was found guilty by a jury in July 2004 of raping and assaulting the woman, causing her harm between 10.00 p.m. on April 7th and 2.00 a.m. on April 8th, 2002, in what the jury was told was "a leafy suburb of Cork".
The now 27-year-old victim told Buckley before the judge announced his decision that she hoped the sentence he received "matches the sentence you have imposed on me for the rest of my life". "It is almost three years since you brutally attacked and raped me and as if that was not bad enough, you pleaded not guilty and I had to take the stand and relive it all again. I will never ever forgive you for that," she said.
Mr Justice Butler, who imposed a concurrent "nominal sentence" of six months for the assault conviction, observed that rape carried a potential life sentence but he felt that was only for "the most extreme cases" and that 10 years was the starting point for "a single rape offence". He certified Buckley as a sex offender but said he would not direct any post-release supervision.
The jury of nine men and two women took almost six hours to reach unanimous guilty verdicts on both counts on day eight of the trial after it spent one night in a hotel.
Det Garda Denis Cahill told Mr Alexander Owens SC (with Ms Alice Fawsitt BL), prosecuting, that the victim's face was in "a desperate state" when gardaí met her. She also had bruising on both sides of her neck and told gardaí that Buckley had tried to choke her and said he would kill her if she did not shut up and stop shouting.
Mr Patrick J. McCarthy SC, defending, with Mr Dermot Sheehan BL, submitted there was no evidence of any risk of Buckley re-offending on his release. He and his family were in grief at the time of the offence due to the tragic death of his sister some days earlier.
The victim told the jury she had been socialising on April 7th with friends and drank one bottle of Budweiser in each of several pubs after sharing a bottle of wine for lunch with them.
She said she went that night to the Franciscan Well on the North Mall to hear a band she liked. Her friends left before it finished but she assured them she would get home on her own. She recalled leaving the Franciscan Well but remembered nothing more until she was on the ground with a man sitting on her with his legs each side of her body.
She described how she tried to get up but the man would not let her. He punched her on both sides of her face and also had a hand to her throat to try to stop her screaming. When he moved his hand from her throat she screamed again and he rained more punches on her.
Buckley said, in evidence, that she had chatted him up in the early hours of the morning when they came across each other on the street and had consented to "full-on" sexual activity.
Under cross-examination, he denied that he throttled her after pushing her to the ground in the back garden of a house and threatened to kill her if she was not quiet. He said she had been standing when he hit her "three times with my right hand and once with my left".
"All I have to say is that I am sorry I hit that girl. My apologies, like," he said.