A building worker has been found guilty by a Central Criminal Court jury of raping a Latvian woman in his car after offering her a lift to her work at 8am on a June morning last year.
Philip Murphy (25), a father of three with addresses at Elmbrook Crescent, Lucan and Lindisfarne Vale, Clondalkin told the jury in evidence that he had consensual sex with her after she asked him to drive to a suitable place.
The jury heard the woman describe how she put the registration number of his car into her mobile phone but Murphy denied to gardaí that his car was in the area where he raped the woman.
Mr Justice Paul Carney directed that Murphy be registered as a sex offender and remanded him in custody for sentence later. He also directed the preparation of victim impact and probation reports and exempted the jury of six men and six women from further service for life.
The jury reached its 10-2 majority verdict following almost seven hours of deliberations and failed to reach a verdict on a second charge of false imprisonment.
Murphy denied the charges during his five-day trial, The 22-year-old woman told Niall Durnin SC, prosecuting, that Murphy pulled up alongside her in his car while she was walking to her job at about 8am and asked her for a light.
He then offered to drive her to work nearby but went past it and parked his car with the passenger side against a wall so that she was unable to get out of the vehicle.
He then threatened her with a knife, saying: "I want sex or I will kill you." She was afraid that she would be killed and decided she had no option but to have intercourse with him.
He then drove her to a bus stop at her workplace and put his arms around her while saying that she was not to tell anyone.
She told two workmates immediately that she had been raped and when gardaí were called she gave them the registration number of Murphy's car that she had entered into her mobile phone.
He denied to gardaí that he had ever met the victim but claimed in evidence in the trial that she had been with him twice before and that they had a sexual liaison.
Murphy is currently serving a three-year sentence imposed in October 2005 by Judge Desmond Hogan at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court for stabbing a taxi-driver in the neck with a broken beer bottle, leaving him with life-threatening injuries, and for hijacking his car in 2001.