A man who raped his partner with a deodorant can before absconding from his trial and fleeing to the UK has been jailed for four and a half years.
The 33-year-old Clare man, who cannot be named to protect the identity of his former partner, was convicted by a jury in his absence after he failed to show up to the closing stages of his Central Criminal Court trial in November 2017.
He was found guilty of one count of raping the woman – the mother of his two children – with a deodorant container in her home on October 26th, 2014. He was acquitted of one count of criminal damage.
Two months after the attack, the man sent the woman messages calling her a “dirty tramp”, a “dirty slut” and telling her: “I’m not one bit sorry...I would do it all again”, the court heard.
“You’re the ex who shoved a can up inside you and swallowed the whole thing, ha,” he said in one text message in December 2014.
The attack involved a level of violence and “intentional humiliation and degradation perpetrated on the injured party”, Patrick Reynolds BL, prosecuting, told the court.
Sentencing the man on Tuesday, Mr Justice Paul McDermott noted that the couple had a somewhat difficult and abusive relationship.
He said that the trial had reached the stage of judge’s charge when the man didn’t appear and the case continued in his absence resulting in the conviction.
Mr Justice McDermott noted from the exchange of texts that the man “took some satisfaction from the fact that he had assaulted his partner” in the “humiliating and degrading” way he had.
The judge said the woman was violently and sexually assaulted in her own home, in “an attack that was sudden, shocking and unexpected”.
“It was particularly disturbing given she was the mother of his two children,” Mr Justice McDermott commented.
He took into account that the man has since led a more productive and stable life. He now accepts his guilt and says he is sorry for what he has done and that remorse was expressed in a letter he had prepared for the court and for his former partner, the judge noted.
Mr Justice McDermott imposed a sentence of six and a half years. He suspended the final two years of the term on strict conditions including that the man not approach the woman, other than in relation to the welfare of their children or by her express invitation.
He ordered that the man remain under the supervision of the Probation Service for three years upon his release from prison and said a post release supervision order was not necessary because of this supervision by the Probation Service. The sentence was backdated to July 22nd, 2021, when the man first went into custody.