A taxi driver who raped three young women in his Dublin flat was jailed today for 30 years in consecutive sentences.
Owen Bermingham (37), with an address at Grosvenor Place, Rathmines picked the three 20-year-old women up at a disco in Rathfarnham and invited them back to his flat.
When the women decided to leave because they felt uncomfortable, he grabbed one by the hair and held a scissors to her throat. He proceeded to rape the three victims, and forced them to perform oral sex on himself and on each other.
Sergeant John McGinn told told Mr Michael O'Higgins SC (with Ms Aileen Donnelly BL), prosecuting, that Bermingham began his attack at about 2.30 a.m and it was not until 6.30 a.m they the victims managed to confiscate the scissors and escape from the flat.
Bermingham pleaded guilty to three charges of rape and three of oral rape on January 23rd, 2003. Three counts of false imprisonment were also taken into account. He has one previous conviction for indecent exposure in 1988.
Mr Justice Paul Carney at the Central Criminal Court imposed three consecutive sentences of 10 years for each victim but suspended the final three years of each because there was an intention to plead guilty at an early stage and €5,000 was offered as compensation and accepted by each victim.
He said: "The background of this case is a common feature of people coming before this court. The nature of the offence is very similar to that of people coming before the courts from a good family after a day of binge drinking or taking drugs.
"The facts of this case are appalling. Not only the attacks on the three victims but he forced them to perform oral sex on each other and I don't think a sentence of 10 years for each victim would be in anyway disproportionate."
Mr Hugh Hartnett SC, defending, said his client suffered from serious depressive episodes in the early part of this decade and was also sexually assaulted as a child. He had no history of criminal activity and expressed genuine remorse for what he done.