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.