Judge asks if more education on consent and pornography needed as he jails man for rape

Cork man (25) found guilty of raping woman in February 2019 and sentenced to 5½ years

Cork Court House — The judge made the comments while sentencing a young man who raped an acquaintance from college during what had previously been a consensual sexual encounter

Isabel Hayes

Fri Jan 12 2024 - 15:37

A judge has expressed concern about the number of young men of previous good character who are coming before the courts for rape.

Mr Justice Paul Burns said that while there are school programmes in place to inform young people about consent and pornography, “one must wonder if more needs to be done in this regard”.

The judge made the comments while sentencing a young man who raped an acquaintance from college during what had previously been a consensual sexual encounter. She was just 18 at the time and was a virgin, the court heard.

The now 25-year-old Cork man was found guilty by a jury of one count of anally raping the woman in her apartment on February 11th, 2019, following a Central Criminal Court trial in Cork last November. He cannot be named to protect the complainant’s identity.

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Sentencing the man on Friday, Mr Justice Burns said the accused “took advantage of the complainant’s lack of sexual experience and abused the trust she placed in him by bringing him into her home”. He said the sexual encounter had been a “complete nightmare” for the young woman.

The judge noted that the man comes from a good family, is well educated and has no previous convictions. He now accepts the jury’s guilty verdict.

“One wonders what caused this young man – well brought up and educated – to act in such a way on the night in question,” the judge said, querying whether the effects of pornography had played a role.

He said there are “catastrophic consequences for engaging in sexual activity without consent” and he expressed concern that young people feel under pressure to engage in sexual activity before they are comfortable to do so.

He handed down a 5½-year sentence on the man and suspended the final year on a number of conditions, including that he undertake a course on sexual consent within two months of his release.

A detective told Thomas Creed SC, prosecuting, that the young woman was celebrating rag week with her friends when she met the young man, who was also a student, in a nightclub. The court heard he gave her a fake name before they started kissing.

She brought him back to her apartment where they had consensual sex. The court heard the woman was nervous as it was her first sexual experience and she felt extreme pain during sex, but consented to it.

Afterwards, the man asked her for anal sex and she said “no, no way” a number of times. The man then forced himself on her, anally raping her and causing her “enormous pain”, the detective said. He then asked her to perform oral sex on him afterwards, which she did while feeling disgust at doing so. The man also filmed the woman on his mobile phone.

The complainant’s friends, including some male friends, were in the apartment at the time and she told them what had happened before the man left. Some of her male friends knew the man from a sports team and told her his real name.

The next day, one of the woman ‘s lecturers noticed she was upset and she confided what had happened to her. She was brought to a sexual assault treatment unit and made a statement to gardaí.

When arrested in June 2019, the man denied raping the woman and told gardaí that all of the sexual activity between them was consensual. He now accepts the guilty verdict of the jury and wrote a letter of apology to the woman. He has no previous convictions.

In her victim impact statement, the woman said she has spent five years trying to recover from the events of that night and that she lost her passion for her intended career as a result of what the man did to her.

She said that having to relive what happened to her at trial left her exhausted and anxious but that she was glad she had the strength to do it.

Jane Hyland SC, defending the man, said he was 20 at the time of the incident. She said that since then, he has changed his life completely and given up alcohol. He completed his college course to a high level and has started a career in his chosen field, the court heard.

He is remorseful for his actions and expressed his shame and disgust at carrying out this act, defence counsel said.

Mr Justice Burns backdated the four-and-a-half year jail term to last December, when the man was taken into custody.

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