A Cork man has been found guilty of raping his former partner two months after he sexually assaulted her and beat her up in front of their crying toddler.
The 30-year-old had pleaded not guilty in the Central Criminal Court to raping his former partner at their Cork city home on September 8th, 2013.
He had pleaded guilty to one count of sexually assaulting the woman by forcing her to give him oral sex and to assault causing harm at the same address on July 10th, 2013.
Following a week-long trial, the jury returned a guilty verdict on the rape count after nearly four-and-a-half hours of deliberating.
Mr Justice Paul Coffey will sentence him for the offences on May 8th.
At the start of the trial, Thomas Creed SC, prosecuting, told the jury of 10 men and two women that the man and woman met in 2010 and had a son together a couple of years later.
The 26-year-old woman told the court that on the night of July 10th, 2013, she and the man went to bed as usual, with their 15-month-old son sleeping in the next room.
She said she was drifting off to sleep when, without warning, he grabbed her by her hair and forced her head between his legs, shouting at her repeatedly.
“I was terrified,” the woman said. “I had gone from sleeping in my own bed to being completely attacked. I didn’t know what was going on.”
The man then forced the woman to perform oral sex, before she managed to escape to the bathroom.
However, after hearing her son crying, she ran into his bedroom. The man followed her in and assaulted her, hitting her head off a bed in the room while their son cried in his cot.
Afterwards, the woman said she struggled to comfort her crying child.
“I was so scared and so terrified. I couldn’t even sing Twinkle Twinkle to calm him down,” the woman said.
Some time later, the man knocked on the door of their son’s bedroom and asked why it was locked, the court heard.
“He told me he didn’t know what happened,” she said.
The woman agreed with defence barrister, Ciaran O’Loughlin SC, that prior to this incident, they had had a “harmonious” relationship.
Break-up
The couple eventually broke up. On the morning of September 8th, 2013, the woman and their son went to the man’s home so they could work out a maintenance and visitation agreement.
The woman told the court she was discussing the agreement with her former partner when he suddenly said: “Can we just f**k and I’ll sign whatever agreement you want?”
The woman said she immediately became “uneasy” and said she wanted to leave.
The man then told her: “You’re going to go upstairs, you’re going to strip off and we’re going to f**k.”
The woman said she begged him not to make her do anything and asked him: “Are you actually going to rape me?
“Some part of me thought if I said that to him, it would shock him out of doing anything,” she told the court. “But he didn’t even flinch.”
During the attack, the woman said she vomited twice, but each time the man led her back into the bedroom and continued to rape her.
Afterwards, she said he made her a cup of coffee before walking her and their child outside to meet her parents.
The woman rang a helpline that night, went to the Rape Crisis Centre the next day and then reported the incident to gardaí.
The man told gardaí the woman had asked him to have sex with her to help her get over the July incident.