A Co Offaly man has been jailed for seven years for raping a student in a car in the driveway of an isolated and derelict house in Donegal in 1995. Joseph Finnerty (34), of Birr Road, Shinrone, was convicted by a jury in November on one of two charges of raping the 24-year-old woman at Corkey, Manorcunningham, on June 1st, 1995. The jury at the Central Criminal Court failed to agree on a second charge of raping her on the same date.
The victim had been out celebrating the end of her exams in Letterkenny RTC. Sgt Michael Foy told Ms Miriam Reynolds, prosecuting, that the woman left Donegal after the rape and would never return to Letterkenny.
Mr Justice Carney said it was difficult to find anything to take into account in Finnerty's favour. Remorse was not a factor as a probation report showed neither Fin nerty nor his family accepted the guilty verdict.
He said Finnerty had previously served a five-year sentence for burglary but had no other convictions for sexual offences. He also had to have regard to the dicta of Mrs Justice Denham of the Supreme Court that sentences were concerned with neither retaliation nor revenge.
Mr Justice Carney said he had to take account of the seriousness of the crime and the particular degradation of making the victim stand naked outside the car before the rape. He also took into account the fact that the woman's virginity had been violently taken and she had been seriously affected.
The victim had told the trial she had been at a night-club with friends celebrating the end of their exams in Letterkenny RTC. She danced with another "nice" man she met there and accepted a lift home in his car.
Finnerty also got into the man's car with the hood of his sweatshirt pulled over his head. The car was driven in the opposite direction to her house as Finnerty was to have been dropped home first, but he refused to get out of the car when it stopped. The car stopped a second time, and the men had a conversation on the roadway. The driver walked away, and Finnerty drove to the driveway of a house where he raped her, she said.
Finnerty said her account of another man was "a figment of her imagination". He claimed he had met her in the night-club by arrangement and they danced and kissed. He said she agreed to go for a drive in his car and consen ted to sexual intercourse.
He also claimed he was illtrea ted in Letterkenny Garda station by gardai who suggested he had been abused by his parents. However, Mr Justice Carney said it had been indicated earlier in the trial that Finnerty had no complaints to make about his detention.