A WATERFORD businessman who raped a prostitute in a local hotel after hiring her by phone through a Cork-based escorts agency has been sentenced to five years’ imprisonment by Mr Justice Barry White.
The last three years of the sentence were suspended.
Billy Keogh (46), a married man and father of six, of Wilder, Kilmeaden, was found guilty in February at the Central Criminal Court of raping the 26-year-old Croatian woman, who claimed he told her he was a garda and also threatened to throw her out of the hotel window. The jury returned a 10-2 majority guilty verdict following about six hours of deliberation that he raped her on May 21st 2006.
The jury had earlier found him not guilty of stealing €1,200 cash from the woman, who was working for the Red Velvets Escorts Agency, based in Cork.
Keogh denied both charges during his six-day trial. He told gardaí he was a respectable businessman running a Waterford refuse company and had been using the Red Velvets agency for two years to have sex with prostitutes assigned by it. The victim rejected €30,000 compensation offered her by Keogh. She told Mr Justice White she wouldn’t accept the money unless directed by the court.
Mr Justice White, who noted she had been threatened by phone on the day she arrived in Ireland to give evidence at the trial, said the court wouldn’t direct her on the compensation issue.
The court had been told previously that she had indicated to Det Sgt David Walsh she was not interested in “voluntarily accepting” the compensation.
She told prosecuting counsel Gerard Clarke SC (with Michael Delaney) she had been prescribed three different medications to combat anxiety in the months following the rape.
She said she had suffered disturbed sleep, heart palpitations and sweating. She was now on two medications and receives counselling in Croatia, where she is also now employed in a well-paid job and is no longer involved in prostitution.
When asked by counsel if she wished to say anything to Mr Justice White, she said: “It’s not nice to [rape] anyone. No matter who I was or what I was doing, it’s not nice.”
Defence counsel Hugh Hartnett SC (with Philipp Rhan) described the “crippling” effect the case had on Keogh and his family. He outlined that there were different scales of rape and that this case didn’t involve the “forceable removal of clothing from a stranger”. Mr Hartnett said the victim might find some comfort to know that Keogh’s recent medical tests came back negative for HIV and other sexually transmitted infections.
Mr Justice White directed that Keogh’s name be placed on the register of sex offenders and said: “It is quite clear to me that you are a man of good character and that you have brought shame and disgrace on yourself and shame and disgrace on your wife and children.”
Suspending the last three years of the sentence, Mr Justice White said he was impressed by how Keogh re-established himself after losing his business in 2004 and acknowledged that he also had an elderly dependent mother and seven employees to support.