A 62-year-old landlord has been jailed for seven years for raping a young woman tenant whom he plied with alcohol until she fell asleep. Lorita O’Donoghue woke up to find her assailant having sexual intercourse with her.
Michael Paul O’Leary of Four Winds, Ballyarthur, Fermoy, Co Cork, had been convicted earlier this year by a jury at the Central Criminal Court of the rape of Ms O’Donoghue, who is in her 30s, at a property that she and her fiance were renting from him in Fermoy on May 28th, 2022.
Ms Justice Siobhán Lankford recalled the evidence given by Ms O’Donoghue at her trial when she told how she had accepted an invite by O’Leary to join him for a nightcap at his nearby property after he had called to visit her while her fiance was away for the weekend.
She recalled how Ms O’Donoghue told how O’Leary kept topping up Ms O’Donoghue’s glass with brandy without invitation and how she became intoxicated and passed out only to wake up to discover someone on top of her inserting their penis into her vagina.
She thought at first it was her fiance but quickly realised it was O’Leary, and she asked him what he was doing trying to wreck her life and that of her fiance and tried to get him off her, but he kept her pinned down and continued thrusting inside her until he was finished.
The judge said that among the aggravating factors was that O’Leary had committed a serious breach of trust in that Ms O’Donoghue was a tenant and to a lesser extent a neighbour, while another aggravating factor was that she was intoxicated, which was evident to him.
She said among the mitigating factors was the fact that O’Leary had never come to Garda attention before or since this incident. And while he was entitled to defend himself, he could not benefit from any discount that would have been available to him had he chosen to plead guilty.
She said she could fix a headline sentence at eight years and reduce it to seven years in light of his previous good behaviour, but there was no basis for suspending any of the sentence given that O’Leary did not accept the verdict of the jury and still maintained his innocence.
The judge praised Ms O’Donoghue for the clarity and bravery with which she had delivered her victim impact statement in which she had told how she was now a different person and how the rape had robbed her of her self-confidence and esteem.
“Since the night I was raped, my entire world was turned upside down. My life as I knew it was over. For almost three years I have been fighting to get my life back together. What you did to me was an utter violation of my mind, my body and my soul,” Ms O’Donoghue told the court.
“I was in a horrifically traumatised state the hours that followed the crime. I was numb and broken, I felt I had died inside – the experience of going to the sexual assault clinic was like being a corpse and I was there because you raped me.”
Speaking after the case, Ms O’Donoghue, surrounded by family and friends, said she was happy with the seven-year sentence imposed on O’Leary. “I feel very thankful to the judge. I feel justice has been done.”
Ms O’Donoghue urged anyone who has been the victim of sexual violence to come forward and report it as they will be believed and she said she hoped that by speaking out, it would encourage others to come forward to report the crime committed against them.
She thanked the jury for believing her and convicting O’Leary while she also praised Det Garda Rachel McGrath of the North Cork Protective Service Unit who investigated the case, Mary Crilly of the Cork Sexual Violence Centre, as well as her family and friends for their support.
