Woman wants inquiry into rape claims

A woman who claims that she was dealt with in a wholly negligible manner by the State following a rape and assault has written to the Taoiseach requesting a statutory inquiry into her case.

Anna Ilnicka, whose case first appeared in the Irish Examiner in 2015, wants an inquiry to examine why the gardaí and the health services failed to properly investigate the crimes committed against her after a garda officer rescued her from the house where she was being assaulted.

Ms Ilnicka’s request comes after files prepared separately by both the gardaí and GSOC into her case were returned from the DPP with a direction that no prosecutions would follow.

Ms Ilnicka’s letter, addressed also to most members of the Dáil, says that an inquiry is required to get to the truth.

“Such an inquiry is needed to investigate my allegations of negligence and reckless disregard of basic requirements in dealing with my complaints of rape, sexual and physical assault,” she wrote.

“Furthermore, separate offences by a member of An Garda Siochana of long-term abuse followed the original assaults upon me and these incidents occurred in [the West] between September 2006 and April 2011.”

Her case dates from April 2006, when she was brought to a town in the west of Ireland on the promise of work and ended up being assaulted over a weekend.

Contemporaneous medical notes from the time confirm her allegation, but despite relating her claims in a hospital she was never medically examined.

Neither was her assailant arrested, and a garda investigation only began after a friend of hers contacted gardaí days after the incident.

She was not examined as a victim of sexual assault, despite her allegations and the fact that she presented with very obvious and severe physical injuries.

Neither the medical staff nor the gardaí pursued the matter thereafter. The incident was treated as one of domestic violence, despite the fact Ms Ilnicka hardly knew her assailant and was not in a relationship with him.

Some months after the assault, Ms Ilnicka was befriended by a garda whom, she claims, also sexually abused her.

In the course of a subsequent investigation it emerged that the garda in question has been the subject of an entirely unrelated previous allegation of sexual abuse some years previously.

After the Irish Examiner published her story, the Minister for Justice Frances Fitzgerald ordered a garda investigation.

In September last year, Ms Ilnicka was informed by the gardaí of the DPP’s decision in relation to how her case had been handled. Two weeks ago, GSOC informed her that the DPP was not proceeding either in prosecuting the garda involved.

In light of those decisions, Ms Ilnicka has requested a statutory inquiry to find out what exactly happened.