A 35-year-old man has been convicted at the Central Criminal Court of raping a woman in a laneway in a Cork town.
Patrick O'Driscoll, of Coombe, Glenville, Fermoy, Co Cork, was remanded in custody by Mr Justice O'Higgins for mention of the case on October 7th when a sentence date will be set. He was found not guilty of anally raping the woman on the same occasion on September 3rd, 2000.
The jury reached its unanimous verdicts following more than four hours' deliberations. O'Driscoll had denied the charges.
The 27-year-old woman told the jury she first saw her attacker when relieving herself in the laneway as she returned home from a disco. She said she shouted "fuck off you pervert", but he grabbed her from behind as she was fixing her clothes and dragged her down the alleyway.
He then hit her on the back of the head several times with what felt like a brick or a stone when she tried to scream for help, and also told her he was going to kill her when he was finished. The woman said he also hit her with his fist. She said she bit O'Driscoll on a finger of one of his hands quite hard, and finally managed to escape when she elbowed him, causing him to fall back. She also grabbed his genitalia and his scream alerted a passer-by.
O'Driscoll ran away, telling both her and the passer-by he would "get them for this". He was arrested some time after the rape when gardaí traced him to a side-road off the main Dublin-Cork road where he was sleeping in his caravan. He confronted gardaí with a slashhook and took off across fields.
Gardai took him into custody later and the victim picked him out in an identity parade.