A SERIAL rapist who told a woman that he was going to drown her baby and cut it into little pieces after he raped her has been jailed for 12 years at the Central Criminal Court.
Mark Doyle (35), of Backlane Hostel, Christchurch, who has a string of previous convictions including two for rape, pleaded guilty to the rape of the woman at her home on the morning of November 15th, 2008.
At the time he had been out of prison for seven months. In a victim impact statement read aloud to the court, the victim detailed how her weight dropped to seven stone after the attack, how she suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and how she thought about the attack first thing in the morning and last thing at night.
Mr Justice Paul Carney said he would have had no hesitation in imposing a life sentence if Doyle’s two previous rape convictions had arisen from two separate incidents, despite believing such a sentence would be overturned on appeal.
“As it stands,” he commented, “I do not see a life sentence surviving further challenge.” He said a sentence of 15 years was appropriate due to the “gratuitous violence, the credible threats to kill and the effect the attack had on the woman”. Taking into account Doyle’s early guilty plea, he dropped this sentence to 12 years with 10 years’ post-release supervision. He also ordered he be added to the register of sex offenders.
Garda Eva Murphy told Monika Leech, prosecuting, that when she met the victim on the afternoon of November 15th, she was crying, was in a very distressed state and had blood in her hair and on her feet. She said the victim told her that Doyle had raped her.
The victim told Garda Murphy that she agreed to meet Doyle after he repeatedly texted her, asking if they could talk. After drinking in a friend’s house, both parties moved on to her home.
After talking in to the early hours of the morning, Doyle became aggressive and told the victim he was “going to have her one way or another”.
Before pushing her on the couch, the victim told gardaí that he said: “Will I not have you? We’ll see; you won’t get of this house.” He then began to repeatedly punch her in the head, at which point she lost consciousness.
The victim awoke to find she was naked on the floor beside the couch with Doyle on top of her. After he had raped her he went in to the kitchen before returning to the sitting room with a knife.
He then tied the victim’s legs with the cord flex from a hi-fi system and began swinging the knife at her legs “like a lunatic”.
Doyle told the victim he was going to kill her before saying that “he would leave her to see what kind of death he was going to give her baby”. He said he was going to make her watch him kill the child and that he would drown the child and cut her in to little pieces.
At this point the accused managed to take hold of the knife and stick it into Doyle’s hand. He then took the cord flex and wrapped it around the victim’s neck. The victim told gardaí she believed he stopped only when he “got scared” as she started gasping for air.
He then told the victim he was sorry and asked if they could “forget about” what had happened. He became enraged when the victim indicated that she would not forget about the attack. The father of the victim’s child then knocked on the front door, and Doyle fled from the scene.
Garda Murphy told Ms Leech that Doyle accepted that he had sex with the victim but maintained that it was consensual. He denied making threats about the victim’s baby and said the victim blacked out as they were having sex and that when she awoke she began “chopping up” her own arms and legs with a knife.
He subsequently pleaded guilty to the charges in December 2009.
Pieter Le Vert, defending, said his client wished to convey his heartfelt apologies to the victim and that he was willing to undergo any sex offender’s treatment programme that the court directed.