A 16-year-old who sexually assaulted five women and threatened to murder and "rape like a dog" another woman was yesterday placed on the register of sex offenders and sentenced to two years' detention at Dundalk Circuit Criminal Court.
The youth, who cannot be named, also assaulted two other women and admitted exposing himself. Two women were each sexually assaulted by him twice, one of them in front of her children.
All the women were in their thirties and were not known to him. The sexual assaults occurred between June and November 2002, when he was 16, and took place on the south side of Drogheda, Co Louth.
He was also charged with a number of burglaries in the town in 2002 and 2003. The 2002 burglaries related to women he had harassed.
Garda Tom Quinn said the harassment charge related to a woman in Galway whose name and number the teenager found in a newspaper advertisement.
Starting in the early hours of June 12th, 2002, he rang her mobile and over the next couple of days the calls got more offensive. He rang her over 20 times, the garda said. "He made horrific threats to rape her, to murder her, to rape her like a dog and he made reference to the missing ladies Jo Jo Dollard and Deirdre Jacob."
A Garda trace led to him being identified and arrested.
The court heard there were a series of complaints of a young man exposing himself in Drogheda and the teenager admitted one count of indecency on June 23rd, 2003.
The court heard the accused's father died when he was young in tragic circumstances.
However, Judge Raymond Groarke said a psychiatric report did not throw any light on his behaviour. He said the offences were appalling and had left victims terrified, devastated and belittled by the accused.
As well as placing him on the register of sex offenders, he imposed concurrent two-year terms of detention for the sexual assaults, false imprisonment and harassment charges.
He imposed three years on the four burglary charges and four months for the two assault charges where the women were attacked but not sexually assaulted. The judge has also listed the case for mention next week, when he hopes to put in place a monitoring system for the youth on his release.