A Kerry man has been jailed for 12 years for the double-rape of a student he picked up in his car while posing as a hackney-driver in Killarney last year.
Daniel Moynihan (19), Raheen East, Rathmore, pleaded guilty at the Central Criminal Court to two charges of raping the woman on September 2nd, 2000, and to assault, causing her harm.
Mr Justice Carney said he took a most serious view of anyone posing as a taxi or hackney driver and committing such appalling offences. "Unaccompanied women rely on these services to get them safely home and if every genuine taxi and hackney driver is going to be considered a potential rapist, then that alters everything as we know it," he said.
Mr Justice Carney imposed a concurrent five-year sentence on the assault charge and suspended the final two years of the rape sentence to take account of Moynihan's guilty plea. "He goes into prison in one generation and will come out in another," he added and refused leave to appeal severity of sentence.
Det Sgt Dan Keane told Mr John Edwards SC, prosecuting, that Moynihan told the woman he had a knife and also that he was in the IRA. He raped her at two different sites.
At one stage when he drove towards the scene of a traffic accident, he did a U-turn and shouted at her to get down on the back of the car in case they met gardaí.
He refused to use a condom the first time he raped her but did use one the second time. He also took her handbag after she tried to make a call on her mobile phone. He left the bag back on a wall in her village some time later. Det Sgt Keane told Mr Edwards the victim didn't wish to hear the evidence in the case or to address the court about the ordeal. But she would come into court for the sentencing. The victim impact report indicated that her life had been "dramatically altered" by the rapes. She had lost faith in life and her relationship with friends and family were badly affected.
She considered herself now as resembling "the walking dead" and was sometimes suicidal. She was in counselling.
Det Sgt Keane said the woman and a friend were picked up by Moynihan at about 2 a.m. They thought he was a hackney-driver and he kept up the pretence. He dropped the first woman off. Moynihan later told gardaí he was glad they had caught him because he wished to be found out. He said he couldn't live with himself.