Serial rapist who threatened baby gets 12 years

A serial rapist who told a woman that he was going to drown her baby and cut it in to little pieces after he raped her has been jailed for 12 years at the Central Criminal Court.

Mark Doyle (aged 35) of Backlane Hostel, Christchurch, who has a string of previous convictions including two for rape, pleaded guilty to the rape of the woman at her home on the morning of November 15, 2008.

At the time he had been out of prison seven months. In a victim impact statement read aloud to the court, the victim detailed how her weight dropped to seven stone in the aftermath of the attack, how she suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and how she thought about the attack first thing in the morning and last thing at night.

Mr Justice Paul Carney said he would have no hesitation in imposing a life sentence if Doyle’s two previous rape convictions had arisen from two separate incidents, despite believing it would be overturned on appeal.

“As it stands,” he commented, “I do not see a life sentence surviving further challenge.” He said a sentence of 15 years was appropriate due to the “gratuitous violence, the credible threats to kill and the affect the attack had on the woman.”

Taking into account Doyle’s early guilty plea, he dropped this sentence to 12 years with ten years post-release supervision. He also ordered he be added to the register of sex offenders.

Garda Eva Murphy told Ms Monika Leech BL, prosecuting, that when she met the victim on the afternoon of November 15, she was crying, was in a very distressed state and had blood in her hair and on her feet. She said the victim told her that Doyle had raped her.

The victim told Garda Murphy that she agreed to meet Doyle after he repeatedly texted her, asking if they could talk. After drinking in a friend’s house, both parties moved onto her home.

After talking in to the early hours of the morning, Doyle became aggressive and told the victim that he was “going to have her one way or another” and that “he was going to have her, and no one else was”.

Before pushing her on the couch, the victim told gardaí that he said “will I not have you, we’ll see; you won’t get out of this house”. He then began to repeatedly punch her in the head, at which point she lost consciousness.

The victim then awoke to find that she was naked on the floor beside the couch with Doyle on top of her. After he had raped her he went in to the kitchen before returning to the sitting room with a knife.

He then tied the victim’s legs up with the cord flex from a hi-fi system and began swinging the knife at her legs “like a lunatic”.

Doyle told the victim that he was going to kill her before saying that “he would leave her to see what kind of death he was going to give her baby”.

He told her he was going to make her watch him kill the child and that he would drown her and cut her in to little pieces.

At this point in the attack the accused managed to take hold of the knife and stick it into Doyle’s hand.

Doyle then took the cord flex and wrapped it around the victim’s neck. The victim told gardaí that she believed that he stopped only when he “got scared” as she started gasping for air.

He then told the victim that he was sorry and asked if they could “forget about” what had happened.

He became enraged when the victim indicated that she would not forget about the attack. At that point the father of the victim’s child knocked on the front door, whereupon Doyle fled from the scene.

Garda Murphy told Ms Leech that, during the course of the five interviews, Doyle accepted that he had sex with the victim but maintained that it was consensual.

He denied making threats about the victim’s baby and said the victim blacked out as they were having sex and that when she awoke she began “chopping up” her own arms and legs with a knife.

He subsequently pleaded guilty to the charges in December 2009.

Garda Murphy agreed with Mr Pieter Le Vert BL, defending, an English expert consulted on the case, determined that wounds on the victim’s hands were self-inflicted.

Mr Le Vert told the court that Doyle had a mild intellectual disorder and that he had difficulty in maintaining himself in a drug-free and drink-free state.

He said his client wished to convey his heartfelt apologies to the victim and that he was willing to undergo any sex offenders' treatment programme that the court directs.