Convicted rapist told woman: I’m going to chop you up

A convicted rapist who told a woman he was going to take her up to the mountains and chop her up has been jailed for eight years.

Robert Melia, aged 48, has three previous convictions for violent sexual assaults on three separate victims in one month in October 1997. In July 1991, he received a six-year sentence for a rape committed in 1987.

Yesterday, Melia, of Shangan Gardens, Ballymun, pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to charges of false imprisonment, assault causing harm, and making threats to kill at the Caulfields Hotel, Dorset St Lower, Dublin, on May 19, 2013.