A man who raped and threatened to kill two women in their Dublin flat has been jailed for 17 years by Mr Justice Carney at the Central Criminal Court.
Barry McGee, Foxfield Grove, Raheny, subjected the 25-year-old Australian victims to four hours of torture, terror and degradation at knifepoint, during which he also threatened to kill them.
He told them: "You are going to play my game and play it according to my rules," and added: "This is no joke," while rubbing the knife against his own face.
Det Sgt George McGeary told the court: "It was one of the most gruesome and horrible cases I have dealt with in the course of my career in the Garda Síochána."
McGee pleaded guilty to three counts each of rape and oral rape, one count of attempted rape, two counts of aggravated sexual assault, two counts of threatening to kill and two counts of false imprisonment of the victims on May 5th, 2002. One of the women told the court he had made her feel sure she was going to die. He had waved the knife at her so closely at one stage that it had scraped her ear.
"It would have gone through my head if I had not moved," she said. McGee felt her heartbeat and told her: "It would take a very big blow to break your breastbone."
No one could imagine the feeling a woman would experience having to call her father to say: "I have been sodomised and raped and almost killed," she said.
"I begged him, I told him he could have all the money we had, everything we had. We even offered to perform more sexual favours for him, if only he would let us not die. There was absolutely no doubt in my mind that Barry McGee was going to kill me."
The second woman said that although she might appear reasonably strong in court, the past eight months had been "unbelievable". She said telling her parents that their only daughter had been raped was one of the hardest things she had ever had to do.
Mr Justice Carney said McGee had raped the women "every which way possible" and had subjected them to every possible degradation and humiliation. Anyone who committed multiple contemporaneous rapes could expect to receive multiple sentences.
He imposed 17-year sentences on the rape and sex assault charges and concurrent eight-year sentences on each count of threatening to kill. He suspended the last two years unconditionally.
Mr Justice Carney said this was a discount given not for McGee's plea of guilty but for the early stage at which he had offered it which vacated a trial date for "another perverted and violent criminal to be tried". The policy of giving a discount for this purpose would continue for as long as there was a backlog of cases in the court and for no longer, he added.
Det Sgt McGeary told Mr Shane Murphy SC, prosecuting, that the women met McGee, a business school drop-out who worked in various Dublin shops, in the Grafton Street area on May 5th, 2002. He was with another man and they accompanied the women to their flat in Rathmines where they were invited in for a drink.
They were there for a while and it was only as they were leaving that McGee showed any sort of odd behaviour by dropping his trousers and asking them if they wanted to perform oral sex on him. They told him to go and he and his friend left the flat.
McGee returned on the pretext of having left money behind. A "fruitless" search was conducted and he was again asked to leave. He went into the kitchen and returned with a large kitchen knife. He then subjected them to their horrendous four-hour ordeal.