A Garda investigation was launched in Cork city yesterday after a young Australian tourist was raped by a man who dragged her into the grounds of a college.
The victim, in her mid-20s, met her attacker in a pub on Washington Street last Monday night. The pair struck up a conversation and the man offered to escort her home.
They started to walk up Washington Street at an unspecified time between midnight and 2 a.m. As they approached the Western Road the attacker forced her inside the railings of a building which houses University College Cork's geography department.
The woman was brutally raped and assaulted for 30 minutes. After a struggle she managed to get away from the man and made her way back to a B&B where she was staying with friends.
The victim went to the Mercy Hospital in the city with a female friend shortly after the attack. She was later transferred to the South Infirmary Sexual Assault Unit.
Gardaí were notified of the rape in the early hours of yesterday morning and an investigation was launched.
Supt Kieran McGann said yesterday that one of the most tragic things about this attack was that it happened just a few feet from the main road where members of the public may have passed without realising what was happening.
He appealed for witnesses to contact gardaí at (021) 4270681, adding that the assault was partly disturbed by an individual passing by.