A man who raped his landlady when she was in a state of temporary paralysis after her drugs had been spiked and she was raped by another man, has been jailed for seven years.
Dmitrus Aleinkovs (31), with a former address in Dublin 24, was convicted at the Central Criminal Court in October of one count of rape in June 2016. The court heard the victim wishes for Aleinkovs to be identified, but to retain her own anonymity.
Aleinkovs returned to Latvia before he was charged and has been in custody since his extradition back to Ireland in December 2022.
Imposing sentence on Friday, Ms Justice Karen O’Connor said Aleinkovs’s behaviour towards the victim was “degrading and humiliating” in light of the woman’s vulnerability at the time.
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She said this case was about the “horrific treatment of a human being, a vulnerable woman” who was “rendered powerless by a person who drugged and raped her”.
Ms Justice O’Connor noted the woman was then “subjected to further attack by a person who was living in her home”, saying that Aleinkovs took advantage of the victim, who had thought he might help her.
She said Aleinkovs subjected the victim to “further humiliating and degrading treatment” by raping her when she was unable to move.
Having considered the mitigation and Aleinkovs’s personal circumstances, she imposed a seven-year sentence, backdated to December 2022 when he went into custody.
The Central Criminal Court heard that the woman, the defendant and others had been socialising prior to the incident. The woman stayed up after others, including Aleinkovs, went to bed.
She contacted a “dial a drink” service to get further alcohol and also to obtain cocaine. A short time later, a courier arrived with drugs. This man entered the house and went into the sittingroom with the woman.
She was immediately affected after taking the drug, and found herself unable to move her body but completely awake and alert.
In her state of near paralysis, the courier removed the clothes from the lower part of her body, then raped her.
When he was finished, this man arranged her and put a cushion over the lower part of her body. He removed the drugs before leaving.
A short time later, while she was still in a state of paralysis, Aleinkovs came into the sittingroom and saw the woman. He then raped her.
The woman gave evidence during the trial that she was internally screaming at Aleinkovs and her eyes made clear she expected help, not a further assault. This rape lasted five minutes, but to her, it felt endless.
Afterwards, Aleinkovs put her jeans on her, then left.
She was later able to get to her phone and raise the alarm, with her father coming to the house to help her.
Reading her victim impact statement, the woman said her life has been “irrecoverably changed”, and the “scars of that day stay with me forever”.
She said she has been living in a “constant state of fear and anxiety” and struggles with panic attacks.
She said she “thought he was going to help me but instead he raped me ... he could see in my eyes I didn’t want this to happen”.
She said she “could see the pleasure in his face, which was sickening”.
Gardaí made efforts to identify the first attacker, but he still has not been found, the court heard.
In her sentencing remarks, Ms Justice O’Connor said the woman’s drugs had been “spiked” by the first attacker, and that the gardai’s extensive efforts to apprehend him had been unsuccessful.
The judge said the aggravating features of this case relating to Aleinkovs’ offending included the breach of trust, the woman’s vulnerability and that Aleinkovs had been living in her home at the time.
She noted that Aleinkovs had been a tenant living in the woman’s house and had been socialising with her prior to his offending. The court considered this offending to be a “huge breach of the trust”, the judge said.
The court heard at an earlier hearing that the victim had sublet part of her home to Aleinkovs before this incident and that there had been consensual sexual intimacy between them, which ended when he objected to continue to pay rent due to their intimacy.
Aleinkovs made a voluntary statement to gardaí and provided a DNA sample. He left the jurisdiction and travelled to Latvia without having been charged.
A European Arrest Warrant was issued and Aleinkovs was extradited to Ireland in December 2022.
In her impact statement, the woman said what happened has also affected her family who has been “living in a state of constant worry”.
She said she has feelings of worthlessness and low self-worth. She said she fears sleep paralysis and doesn’t feel safe when she sleeps.
She described feeling like she was not worth anything that night, but was “something to be used and discarded like rubbish when he finished with me”.
Ms Justice O’Connor thanked the woman, noting that “it takes courage to walk up here in a very formal environment and sit in front of a group of strangers and to provide a statement like this” and to go through a criminal trial.
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