How bad does rape have to be for rapist to get a life sentence?

IT was a week when the true meaning of life sentences became clear.

For two serial rapists life does not really mean life. The only real life sentences are those their victims are forced to live with.

David Hegarty, a father of one, inflicted a life sentence on three women.

In 1998 he raped two students in Cork city and was landed a 10-year sentence. In May 2008, just two years out from prison (having received the standard one-quarter remission), he struck again.

The Corkman raped a foreign national while she waited for a bus in the city. At the Central Criminal Court last Monday, Mr Justice Paul Carney said he was inclined to impose a life sentence on Hegarty, whose crime was “particularly predatory and opportunistic”.

He noted Hegarty, 32, had already received sentences previously for similar crimes.

“This raises inferences in my mind that he will do so again at the first possible opportunity and that the appropriate sentence is one of life imprisonment.”

But he said the Court of Criminal Appeal (CCA) had overturned a life sentence he had imposed on another rapist, Gerard Kelly.

Mr Justice Carney said he was bound by this ruling, which stated he must impose a “proportionate and determinate sentence”.

In view of this, he sentenced Hegarty to 13 years in prison with 10 years post-release supervision.

The victim told the court she could never forget what had been done to her.

She said the attack had “totally changed” her lifestyle and was afraid to walk anywhere on her own.

She said she was suspicious of men and suffered sleepless nights.

Two days later, a serial paedophile had his life sentence for raping two boys, aged nine and 11, overturned by the CCA.

Kildare man Philip Sullivan, 46, with an address in Glasnevin, Dublin, was given a new sentence of 15 years, with the final two and a half years suspended.

The court ruled that he should have been given credit for an early guilty plea and signs of remorse.

The two and a half years suspended was on condition Sullivan attended counselling. He would also have to comply with 10 years post-release supervision.

He had been given the original life sentence by Mr Justice Carney last year, who said the defendant had destroyed incredibly young lives. He raped them between April 2004 and July 2006.

Sullivan also had two previous convictions and had not responded to treatment while serving terms for those offences.

In 1995, he was jailed for four years for 16 counts of sexually assaulting an eight-year-old boy in 1992.

While serving that sentence, he was given a further five years for raping a 23-year-old man.

He underwent therapy at Wheatfield Prison aimed at preventing him from re-offending.

The CCA acknowledged Sullivan represented “a continuing danger to the public”.

There was public outrage after the CCA’s decision. The Rape Crisis Network said sex offenders should not re-enter society “regardless of their known risk and without any reduction in likelihood of rape again”.

Legal experts said the ruling raised concerns over the court’s implementation of the law on rape.

Barrister and lecturer Paul Anthony McDermott said the Oireachtas laid down a possible life sentence for rape.

“If no one gets a life sentence, or no life sentence is successfully upheld, people will start to wonder is the penalty for rape is life or something less than life,” he said.

He said that following court judgements in the last few months he did not know what a rapist had to do to get a life sentence.

He said in Sullivan’s case, the CCA seemed to place greater weight on the early guilty plea and the apparent remorse than on the previous convictions and the failure of treatment.

Mr McDermott said the CCA was saying judges could not hand down life sentences for rape, which had to be reserved for the worst possible cases.

Instead they must given determinate cases of 10 or 12 years, or so.

“One would wonder how much worse would it have to be to attract a life sentence,” he said.