Previously convicted rapist jailed for attempted rape

A previously convicted Donegal rapist has been jailed for 11 years by Mr Justice Kevin O’Higgins at the Central Criminal Court for attempting to rape another woman last October.

Damien Collier (aged 25) of Glenwood Park, Letterkenny tricked his victim in the early hours of the morning after she gave him €20 to buy cigarettes and drove her to a lonely rural laneway where he committed the crime after she tried to stop him kissing her.

He was convicted by a jury in May of the attempted rape and sexual assault of the then 24-year-old woman he met outside a disco in the town on October 1, 2006.

Mr Justice O’Higgins said Collier should be given a place on the sex offenders treatment course in Arbour Hill Prison but noted there were only eight places available annually on this.

"The reality is that as many as eight or more serious sex offenders leave this court every year," he said. Earlier, the judge said he wanted to know if there was a place for Collier on this course and if not, why?

Collier had pleaded not guilty to the charges during his five-day trial. The jury returned its guilty verdicts following some five hours deliberation and after spending one night in a hotel.

Inspector Sylvester Henry said Collier was previously jailed for six years on November 3, 2003 by Mr Justice Paul Carney for brutally raping a then 23-year-old woman in Letterkenny on October 20, 2000 after he banged her head on tarmac and told her: "You’ll do this or I will fucking kill you!"

She screamed for help but he ordered her to shut up and when she told him there were cameras all over the street, he dragged her by the hair into a darkened car park, ordered her to take her clothes off and raped her after once again threatening to kill her if she didn’t allow him to have sex with her.

That victim had also been at a Letterkenny disco and had left to walk home alone following a row with her boyfriend. Collier told gardai later that he thought she had sex with another man who had been with him earlier and he assumed "she was anybody’s."

Mr Justice Carney suspended the last 18 months of that sentence in consideration of Collier’s guilty plea which he said freed the court to try another violent criminal and helped ease its then trial date backlog.