If this had been in a gun friendly state in the U.S. these scumbags would be suffering from acute lead poisoning after about the second “unannounced visit” and the expected winners of the next Darwin awards. Instead they invaded several homes before getting caught and will get another chance to invade homes after they get out.
A Dublin man was tonight sentenced to nine years in jail for trying to force a young woman to have sex with her flatmate and then cutting her with a knife.
Stephen Phelan, 20, from Poddle Close in Kimmage was found guilty of aggravated sexual assault and assault causing harm to the woman by a jury in June.
At the sentencing hearing, Judge Phillip O’Sullivan also imposed concurrent sentences ranging from three to seven years for 17 other offences carried out on the same night.
On February 11 2003, Phelan and an accomplice began a spree of burglaries which led to the sexual assault, the stabbing of a student nine times and the crashing of a car into a Dublin Bus.
Judge O’Sullivan said Phelan had been involved in a series of violent incidents and outlined the impact on his victims: post traumatic stress disorder, the loss of power in an arm, permanent scar wounds and a fear of sleeping alone at night.
“No summary of mine can do justice to the trauma suffered by these people,” he said.
He imposed a five-year probation sentence on Phelan to commence on his release, after hearing from a psychiatrist who said he had serious reservations about him getting out into society again under the influence of drugs.
Phelan had been spending €1500-€1600 euro a day on crack cocaine and had been using robberies to fund his habit.
Detective Sergeant George McGeary said Phelan and his accomplice, who has since fled the jurisdiction, had broken into a house in Harold’s Cross, where four people were living, including the young woman.
They armed themselves with a screwdriver, a Stanley knife, a Swiss army knife, a dumb-bell and a hacksaw.
After searching the house for property and money, Phelan went into the bedroom of a 24-year-old tenant. She screamed when she saw him and shouted at her flatmate to get her trousers.
The court heard he came into the room and told her: “Give us what we want or we’ll cut you.”
He was unable to find her ATM card and told her to take off her clothes, where he believed she was concealing it.
Later in the burglary, he came back into her room and told her to lie down on the bed or he would cut her nipples.
She refused several times to take off her clothes but then Phelan came back, held a knife to her throat and told her to ’take off her f*****g clothes’.
Detective Sergeant McGeary told the court that she was crying while she took her trouser bottoms off.
He used his knife to cut off her underwear and then told her to have sex with one of her two male flatmates.
He refused, saying “She’s my friend” but was then cut twice on the upper arm in a X shape.
The young woman was then ordered into the bedroom of another flatmate, who had been forced to lie naked on the bed.
Phelan told them to have sex together and they kissed, pretending to have sex.
Phelan then cut the woman’s buttocks with a knife and also made a cut running from the top of her back to the base.
Detective Sergeant McGeary told the court that the flatmates had been terrified by Phelan’s threats.
Home invasions are rare where people’s rights to defend themselves are not infringed by oppressive governments. And this is just a hint of some of the things that happen.
What utter nonsense. Believe me that this is the most horrific crime spree that I have heard of in this state. But do you honestly think the outcome would have been any better if guns were more freely available? Did you not consider the possibility that, if this addict had been armed with a gun rather than a knife, he might have killed or seriously injured many of these people during this rampage? Do you honestly think that a young female student would have had a gun at her side while she slept?
Clearly you know nothing of Irish culture or current affairs. Despite stereotypes of the country, we have no history of bearing arms. Nobody feels “oppressed” or that their rights are being infringed by not being allowed to carry lethal weapons. Gun crime has increased significantly in the last two years. Do you really think that increasing the availability of these weapons would improve the situation?
While this is an absolutely sickening incident, we can do without your solution. The failing here lies in the justice system that failed to imprison him after thirty previous convictions and the police force that allowed him such ready to access to cocaine. Vigilantism is not a real solution, and only results in an arms race with criminals, as can be witnessed in many large US cities. Rather, rational people in other Western countries would seek to improve the effectiveness of the police and judiciary, making the need for people to bear dangerous weapons irrelevant. The fact that you’ve attempted to use this highly sensitive and distressing event, about which you know nothing, to justify your beliefs is seriously highly inappropriate.
I’d almost be satisfied if organisations outside the U.S. would stop attempting to use “highly sensitive and distressing event(s)” to pressure U.S. lawmakers into violating the 2nd Amendment to our Constitution. They can and will have their status as Wards of the State if they want it.
The only trouble is, of course, that once other countries’ citizens place all of their faith and hope into The Omnipotent State, they’re going to regret it at some stage, and then turn to the U.S. for help.
I found this bit of Dan’s comment interesting:
“Vigilantism is not a real solution, and only results in an arms race with criminals, as can be witnessed in many large US cities.”
Dan, you do know that most large U.S. cities restrict firearms almost as much, if not more, than many European countries? Handguns are banned in Washington D.C. and Chicago. They are severely restricted in New York City as well. The people who live in those cities also have about the same attitude as you regarding ownership of firearms.
Personally, the most shocking element of this news story was that the people in this house were utterly defenseless and had no means to fight back.
Compare the number of burglaries that occur while someone is home in the U.S. versus the UK–about 13% versus 59% (http://www.tsra.com/Lott16.htm).
And yes I do honestly believe the outcome would have been better if guns had been freely available. In the U.S. firearms are used about five times more often to stop a crime in progress than to commit a crime. I have no reason to believe it would be much different in the U.K. Both of my daughters (ages 17 and 19) have taken the N.R.A. personal protection class on the defensive use of handguns. They are competent to defend themselves using handguns and I encourage them to have that option available to them should they need it. In the situation described in the new article their were four victims in the flat. At various times they were left alone in their rooms. Had they had firearms there they could have easily defended themselves and their flatmates. Look at the multitude of stories (http://www.claytoncramer.com/gundefenseblog/blogger.html) where the availability of firearms saved lives and property.
What I know about Irish culture and current affairs is that they have oppressive gun laws that prevent people from exercising their inalienable rights to defend themselves with the best tools for that task. I consider it a crime against humanity and believe the politicians that imposed those illegal laws should be put in prison. Whether or not anyone there “feels oppressed” is irrelevant. See my Quote of the Day for today (https://blog.joehuffman.org/2005/12/13/quote-of-the-day-adolf-hitler/) which I chose just for you. Not only have gun crimes increased in the U.K. but crimes without guns have dramatically increased as well. Don’t you see the futility of banning guns? The U.K. has banned all handguns yet the number of crimes using guns continues to increase! And, of course, the number of defensive uses of guns has gone to almost zero. In the U.S. we’ve been saying this for decades, “When you ban guns only criminals will have guns.” Why can’t you face the obvious facts?
Using deadly force in defending yourself against immediate permanent injury or death is NOT vigilantism. Please look up the definition of vigilantism. Self defensive is an inalienable right claimed by all species for all time. That the U.K. has chosen to infringe on this right does not make the exercise of that right vigilantism.
You believe people advocating the restriction of weapons are rational? Then answer just one question: https://blog.joehuffman.org/2004/12/14/just-one-question.
I’m all for improving the effectiveness of the police and the judiciary. And if that can be done to the point that owning defensive tools is irrelevant–wonderful. And in that case it would also be irrelevant if people possessed defensive tools.
What is inappropriate here is that the politicians who passed laws eliminating the possibility of these people to properly defend themselves are not on trial with Phelan and his accomplice. Those politicians are accomplices in every crime of violence where the victim was disarmed and deserve a sentence equal to the physical perpetrator for each of those crimes.
My attitude has changed radically since;
1. I got married and had children, and
2. I grew up.
Yes, in that order.
I could not live with myself if my family suffered because I was unwilling or unprepared to defend them.
This is the problem we run into when we have the discussion on gun rights focused on the ability to defend against common criminals. With that limited focus, Dan is right, (or, with his version of the perfect society it could be right). “If only we had better law enforcement.” “If only we would win the war on drugs.” “If only the criminal would have been locked up sooner.”
You said it yourself, Joe, “I’m all for improving the effectiveness of the police and the judiciary. And if that can be done to the point that owning defensive tools is irrelevant–wonderful. And in that case it would also be irrelevant if people possessed defensive tools.”
This only leads Dan, using the very limited focus on common criminals, with the belief that guns COULD be irrelevant in his perfect society. So we now have gun control advocates fighting all the harder to create the impossibly perfect society, where guns are irrelevant. (And our “cold dead fingers” slogan really doesn’t fit in with this perfect society.)
Therefore, any gun control discussion should never fail to leave out the real reason guns are necessary; GOVERNMENT becoming the criminal. It’s not like history doesn’t prove that it happens!
Governments always tend toward creating an elite class. That elite class continues to have the right to bear arms, while the “common man” is continually limited. The only way for the common man to remain with a fighting chance against the inevitable government becoming criminal is to have that fight while the common man is still armed.
In that sense it is already too late for Dan and his country, (unless, his government’s elite class is willing to give up power.. YEAH RIGHT!) So, Dan has two choices; get himself killed attempting to throw off the chains of his government, or; turn hell into paradise.
I will not judge Dan’s decision of paradise, for one day, I may believe I am there as well.
Let me quote the Geek with a .45 on this:
“In a truly civil society peopled primarily by enlightened, sober individuals, the carriage of arms might be deemed gratuitous, but it is nonetheless harmless.
“In a society that measures up to anything less than that, the option to carry arms is a necessity.”
This extends, of course, to the keeping of weapons at home for defense as well.