Woman had "a gut feeling" attack was connected to ex-husband

A jury has heard that a west Dublin woman, who was raped in her home by one of two men who broke into it, believes her former husband was capable of arranging for the men to carry out the attack.

She told Mr Blaise O’Carroll SC, defending, at the Central Criminal Court, that she had taken a barring order out against her former husband after he threatened to kill her if she was in the former marital home in which the attack took place.

The accused has pleaded not guilty to raping and falsely imprisoning the woman in her west Dublin home on August 24, 2001 and to a third charge of burglary of the house and theft of a mobile phone and cash on the same occasion.

The complainant earlier told Mr Paul Coffey SC (with Ms Mary Rose Gearty BL), prosecuting, that the she was woken at 4am when two men entered her bedroom wearing balaclavas and brandishing kitchen knives.

They pushed her face down on the bed, told her she would be stabbed if she screamed and tied her hands behind her back.

She did not see the face of either man but believed one to be older than the other. When asked if she had money in the house she told them there was IR£600 in her handbag.

The two men drank tea and smoked cigarettes in the bedroom before she heard one ask the other "are you going to slip it in?" She heard a belt buckle being undone and was terrified she would be killed.

They said "you probably won’t live on your own after this, you’ll probably go back to your mother" and "you probably think we are the biggest scumbags for doing this".

The second man pulled her pyjama bottoms and underwear down. She said she heard the accused put on a condom before climbing on top of her naked. He told her to relax and enjoy it and said, "don’t cry or I’ll get angry". He penetrated her for five to 10 minutes before ejaculating.

The second man then sexually assaulted the women by digitally penetrating her and told his accomplice, the accused, that he "couldn’t get it up" because he was "flying on cocaine".

The men tied up the woman with cable before they left by the front door using her house keys. She had asked them to pull her clothes back up as she did not want to be found in that state by her son, who was staying with a friend on the night of the incident.

She succeeded in freeing herself after a short while and ran to a neighbour who raised the alarm for her.

Under cross examination the woman agreed with Mr O’Carroll that she had not mentioned a condom in the first statement she made to gardaí hours after the attack. She said she had been dazed and in a state of shock at the time.

She also agreed that she got the impression that her attackers had known more about her than she knew about them.

She had "a gut feeling" the attack had something to do with her former husband as he had previously threatened her. "I moved back into the house in May (2001) and was attacked in August, it was not a coincidence".

The hearing continues before Mr Justice Daniel Herbert and a jury of six men and six women.