Man jailed for six years after he raped family friend while she was sleeping

A woman who woke up to find a family friend raping her has spoken of how in the aftermath she had attempted to cut out “my privates” and had attempted to cut her face because of comments the man had made to her.

Albert Crowley (68) formerly of South Block, Mount Anthony, Ardee Road, Dublin 6, which is residential housing for older people, had pleaded not guilty at the Central Criminal Court to a charge of rape at his home on March 8th, 2019. He had further denied five charges of sexual assault, including two offences of attempted rape of the then 23-year-old woman.

He was convicted by the jury on all charges last March following a seven-day trial. He indicated through his counsel on Monday that he believed that the woman had been consenting to sexual intercourse.

Crowley has nine previous convictions, including one for armed robbery imposed by the Special Criminal Court more than 20 years ago. His other convictions are for road traffic and theft offences.

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On Monday, Crowley was sentenced to six years in prison with the final six months suspended. Siobhán Ní Chúlacháin, prosecuting, told the court that while the woman did not want to be named in reporting of the case, she did not have an issue with Crowley being named in court reports.

A local investigating garda said the woman had returned to the Crowley’s home, along with her boyfriend, after the three had attended a funeral nearby. They continued drinking in the man’s home through the day and into the following morning, at which point the woman’s boyfriend left the house. Crowley then left to go to a shop to get a mixer for a bottle of rum he had. The woman got into the man’s bed and fell asleep.

It had been her intention to get up again when Crowley returned to his home and to continue to drink with him and the woman was also expecting her boyfriend to return to the house.

The garda said the woman woke up when she heard sexual moaning in her ear and could feel someone having sex with her. She pushed up and saw Crowley. She slapped him and told him to get off her.

The woman told gardaí that Crowley looked shocked and frightened that she had woken up. She ran to a next-door neighbour to look for help and Crowley followed her. She told the neighbour that she had just been raped by a man she had known her all her life.

The woman’s victim-impact statement was read into the record by Róisín Lacey SC, prosecuting (with Ms Ní Chúlacháin), in which she stated that she hated herself for not being wiser to allow herself to fall asleep in his apartment. “I fell asleep in the house of someone I trusted,” she said before she adding that she had been intoxicated at the time.

She said she carried anger and pain with her and felt as if her body was not hers. “I feel weak and degraded. I suffer from PTSD, get flashbacks all the time and feel sick to my stomach. It feels like my chest is caving in,” the woman’s statement continued before she outlined incidents of self-harm including an attempt to “cut out my privates”.

The woman said she had been violated of her rights to “feel comfortable in my own body” and had “attempted to cut my face because of the comments he had made. An old man had seen in me that which I wish he had not,” she continued.

The woman spoke of how after seeing Crowley at the trial she had overdosed and had been hospitalised for five days. “I struggled to survive when I see his face in my head,” she said.

“I did not choose this; unfortunately it was forced upon me,” she said before she spoke of how she struggled to give her two-year-old daughter the life she deserved because of the depression, anxiety and PTSD, which “came back rapidly when I went to trial”.

Mr Justice Michael McGrath said in the court’s view the woman was “brave and courageous” and had suffered significantly. He said she had continued to endure significant psychological effects which had resulted in episodes of self-harm and thoughts of taking her own life. He noted that it had also impacted on her ability to look after her own child.

He said the woman had been asleep and in a state of intoxication when she was raped and Crowley had taken advantage of those facts. He noticed the 40-year age gap and said that the fact that Crowley was a trusted family friend meant there was a breach of trust involved in the case.

The judge noted that Crowley claimed he had checked that he had the woman’s consent but he added “clearly the jury rejected this claim” and acknowledged that the woman had learned that Crowley had also sexually assaulted her only from what Crowley told the gardaí in interview as she had been asleep at the time.

He said the appropriate headline sentence was eight years before he took various mitigating factors into account including that Crowley had no history of sexual offending and had expressed remorse to the woman in the context of still maintaining that he believed he had her consent and not accepting the verdict of the jury.

The judge imposed a sentence of six years with the final six months suspended for two years on condition that he engage with the Probation Service for two years upon his release.