Man gets nine-year sentence for rape

A Dublin man has been jailed for nine years by Mr Justice Paul Carney at the Central Criminal Court for raping a prostitute in…

A Dublin man has been jailed for nine years by Mr Justice Paul Carney at the Central Criminal Court for raping a prostitute in a disused railway carriage at Heuston Station. Martin Stafford (38) Cork Street, the Coombe, pleaded guilty to raping the then 28-year-old victim on March 10-11th, 2005.

During her ordeal, which lasted from 7.30pm until she succeeded in alerting gardaí by mobile phone who released her at about 5.30am, she was threatened with a scissors or knife and with a hammer.

Stafford's 23 previous convictions included false imprisonment in 1997 of an office block cleaning woman whom he forced at knife point to perform oral sex on him and for which he got a seven-year sentence, another false imprisonment of a woman in 2002 as well as burglaries, thefts and road traffic offences.

Mr Justice Carney directed that Stafford be registered as a sex offender and that he undergo a further nine years post release supervision.

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He said the facts outlined struck him as being strikingly similar to the Robert Melia case in which his sentence of nine years had been increased to 12 years by the Court of Criminal Appeal where the DPP objected to the lower sentence. "The DPP had a lot to say in the Court of Criminal Appeal behind my back but very little in this court to my face," he said.