A father of two who kidnapped a Spanish au pair, raped her and made her swallow her own faeces has been jailed for 15 years by Mr Justice Paul Carney who said the case had reached new depths of depravity.
David Mullen (29) apologised to the victim after subjecting her to an ordeal lasting 2½ hours, at Library Road, Dún Laoghaire, saying "I have raped you", gave her his name and offered to walk her home.
He told her he wanted to have a girlfriend to have meals and attend the cinema with and invited her to meet him again the next day at DúLaoghaire shopping centre, saying if she wished "to contact the guys", meaning the Garda, he would confess to having raped her.
Mullen, from Knockmore Crescent, Tallaght and Tymon Hall Park, Kingswood, was seen afterwards by gardaí standing at a taxi rank with dirt on his hands and was taken to Dún Laoghaire Garda station for a drugs search which proved negative.
Meanwhile, the rape complaint had been made and a few minutes after his release on the drugs matter, Mullen was arrested for that crime.
He admitted it to gardaí and pleaded guilty at the Central Criminal Court to eight charges arising out of the events on April 9th, 2005.
Mullen, a maintenance operative at the Stephen's Green and DúLaoghaire shopping centres, admitted false imprisonment of the 23-year-old victim, rape, oral rape, attempted rape, sexual assault by digital anal and vaginal penetration, aggravated sexual assault, robbery of her credit card and making a threat that she would be unable to have babies, intending that she should believe it.
Mr Justice Carney said this case was "unique in falling to a new depth of depravity". He imposed two terms of 15 years for rape and aggravated sexual assault, and terms of eight, seven, five, four and three years on the other counts and suspended the final 18 months of each of the 15-year terms in view of Mullen's guilty plea and full co-operation with the Garda.
He also declared Mullen a registered sex offender and directed that he undergo 10 years' post release supervision.
Garda Richard Reddin told Tony Hunt, prosecuting, that the victim was walking home after socialising with friends when Mullen ran after her and hauled her into a yard off Library Road, warning her not to move and not to scream. He told her he was going to rape her and made some comments about the IRA, as well as saying some things she thought might have been in Irish.
Patrick Gageby SC, defending, submitted a written apology signed by Mullen as well as medical and other reports on him and noted that he had followed up his full co-operation with the Garda with guilty pleas. He said Mullen was in the mild mental handicap range and had spent long terms in special schools due to his mental disability. He had no prior history of sexual deviancy or aggression towards women and his previous conviction showed he was a person who was capable of being supervised by the probation service.