A rape victim's story: Six months of assaults, five years in court

At the age of 14 Amanda* endured six months of sexual assaults by a family friend. Five years later she decided to report the crime. After years of court appearances, cross-examinations and extreme pain, does she feel she got justice?

 

By 

Sylvia Varnham O'Regan

57Note: This article contains content that may be confronting for some people. Readers seeking support can contact the Sexual Assault & Domestic Violence National Help Line​ on 1800 737 732 or Lifeline on 13 11 14

She was alone in the room with a telephone in front of her. It had been more than five years since she had last spoken to the man but the memories of what he did to her had stayed close by. Now in her early twenties, she had been asked to call him and get him to acknowledge everything. The police would record the conversation and use it against him in court.

"It wasn't just a general conversation," Amanda* says, speaking down the line from her home in Victoria. "You can't just say, 'Why did you do it?' That could mean anything. You have to be point-blank specific with everything that you are talking about."

Detailing a series of terrifying sexual assaults one by one, she asked him: Why?

His response was unexpected. "I was absolutely shocked that he would even talk to me after everything that he'd done," she says. "I was shocked that he admitted to it.

"He told me that he still loved me and would leave his wife and kids for me."

The recorded conversation would be used as evidence against the man in a case that took more than five years to get through the courts.

"If I knew then how long it would take and the stress it would have on me, my family and my friends, I wouldn't have done it," Amanda says now of the court process. "Not a chance."

Trust

Amanda's family had known and trusted the man who went on to abuse their daughter, and had welcomed him into their lives. For privacy reasons, Amanda doesn't want details published about how they were connected but says he was a respected figure in her community.

The shocking sexual assaults went on for six months. They ended when the man was found to have acted inappropriately in another incident and lost his job. Amanda's parents were put off by his behaviour and cut the family's contact with him.

"I was absolutely shocked that he would even talk to me after everything that he'd done. I was shocked that he admitted to it."

At the time she was abused, Amanda was at an age when other teenagers were starting to meet boys and get into relationships. This made that part of Amanda's life even more confusing and difficult to navigate.

"It's very hard to separate being assaulted and having a boyfriend," she says. "Your boyfriend buys you gifts but so does the perpetrator. The perpetrator will treat you nicely at some stage but so will your boyfriend. It's very hard to distinguish the difference . It took me a very long time to learn and was a huge issue for me. "

Amanda says that throughout the abuse the man manipulated her into thinking he was devoted to her - despite having a long-term girlfriend who is now his wife - and this isolated her further.

"It's very hard when you’ve got somebody showing you so much attention and doing so much for you and telling you that you're the best thing in their life," she says. "They make you question yourself. I knew it was wrong, I knew he was a creep, but he's like, 'I'm the best thing that you're ever going to have' and you go, 'Oh well, are you?' I'm 14. I don’t know anything different."

In a victim-impact statement that she read in court years later, Amanda described the terrible toll the abuse had on her.

"At the age of 14, I couldn't eat, I was having panic attacks, I couldn't study, I couldn't sleep. And when I did sleep I had nightmares. I was putting blankets over my windows to avoid anyone being able to see in. Every day I had to drag myself out of bed, and then there were days I just couldn't."

She told no one about the abuse other than one school friend, who would later testify in court, and continued to stay silent long after it ended.

But at the age of 20, Amanda finally told her sister.

"She was very upset," Amanda says. "Mum said to her, 'What’s wrong?' and she said, 'I can’t tell you, I can't tell you, Amanda made me promise'."

It wasn't long before her parents found out. "They were absolutely devastated and blamed themselves," she says.

Court

Soon afterwards, Amanda reported the assaults to the police and they began to build a case against the perpetrator.

They warned Amanda that she would have very little chance of getting a conviction − rape cases have low rates of conviction in Australia − but she pressed ahead anyway.

Partway into the investigation, the police told Amanda they didn't have enough evidence to prove the crimes. They asked her to call the perpetrator and have him admit the assaults so they could record the call and use it as a confession. By this time she was 21. "I said, 'Holy hell, you've got to be joking',” she recalls. The way she saw it there were two options: "To either give up and never know if I could have made a difference and could have pinned him for all the trauma he put me through, or give it my all and have a crack and see if I can get some evidence.

"Mum said to her, 'What’s wrong?' and she said, 'I can’t tell you, I can't tell you, Amanda made me promise'."

"I decided to do it because I thought I'd always wonder." 

It was more than a year before the case was finally heard, first in the Magistrates Court  which had to decide whether there was enough evidence for charges to be laid – and then the County Court.

In the Magistrates Court she was subjected to hours of punishing cross-examination. "I was on the stand for six hours on the first day and it was just horrific," she says. 

"They wanted to know what I was wearing on the day, what footwear I had on, what he was wearing and what the weather was like."

She says she felt like the system was working against her and couldn't believe the way defence lawyers treated her in the witness box.

"They questioned my sexuality, they told me I was a drug addict, they told me I was an alcoholic at 14," she says.

"It’s almost like torture what they put you through on that stand."

"I felt like saying, 'If your daughter were assaulted, what would you be doing? Would you be talking to them like this?'”

In the Magistrates Court Amanda gave her testimony via video link, but in the County Court she read out her victim impact statement with the perpetrator sitting in the room.

"He had his family there: his wife, his mother, his father, his brother," she says. "I couldn't look up from my statement because I was so rattled.

"I looked at him and he was just looking at the ground. I was infuriated. I thought, 'You've done this, not me. We're in this scenario because of the crimes you’ve committed so you could at least look at me when I’m speaking to you.’

Reading the statement in court, she told the man: "It has taken me years to overcome the affects as a result of the crime you committed. I have not been able to have a relationship, as I don't feel comfortable trusting men. I am even suspicious of receiving gifts, as I fear the ulterior motive," she said.

"It has traumatised my family, because they feel they failed to protect their little girl."

"When everyone else was out partying, I was having panic attacks and too terrified to go outside. I was seeing my sexual assault counsellor several times a week, just to cope. Filling the bin with tissues because I couldn’t control my tears. I had to learn basic techniques: I had to learn how to sleep, how to study, how to have relationships - all the other things people take for granted. I was filled with anger, confusion and fear. 

"As a result of the crime you have committed I felt repulsive, disgusting, embarrassed, humiliated, ashamed and I loathed my own body."

When she reached the last line, she stood up and looked directly at him. "This might be a victim impact statement, but I am not a victim, I am a survivor."

'Victim'

As the court process stretched into years, Amanda worked hard to get on with her life, undergoing counselling and studying for a career in healthcare. It wasn't easy. "Every time a significant event came up, the cops would call," she says.

But it wasn't just the time delays that made her angry, it was the court process itself, which she says is fixed on the idea of sexual assault survivors as "victims". 

"I was told, 'You have to cry because the jury won’t believe you if you don't,’" she says. "It infuriates me that you have to be a pathetic crying mess 10 or 11 years later.

"I worked so hard to make sure I could get through every day without this having a detrimental impact on my life, only to be told, 'Go straight back there. Go back to that place and play the innocent victim card.’”

Sentence

Six years after she reported the assaults, the perpetrator asked to make a deal and pleaded guilty to five of the 17 charges against him. He agreed to serve 10 months in jail. He had assaulted her for six.

Amanda's lawyers were overjoyed, telling her they had expected him to get less, but she was stunned. "I said, 'Is that it? Is that it? After all of this, after everything I've done, after the voice recording, this is what we're down to?'"

Amanda later pursued a case against the man in a civil court and again he pleaded guilty at the last minute. Amanda was awarded $40,000 in damages. She says her legal fees came to almost $20,000.

"I was told, 'You have to cry because the jury won’t believe you if you don't'."

She takes solace in knowing her rapist will be on the sex offenders' registry for life. "I felt that I had done my civil duty in that he will never work with children again." But she is adamant that the system needs a complete overhaul.

"The current process favours the accused," she says. "The accused person doesn’t have to get up on the stand and yet the victim has to be cross examined at extreme length while the accused sits back and pays their lawyer to try and destroy the victim's credibility."

She says there needs to be separate courts for sexual assault cases to bring down "horrific" wait times.

"People don't report [rape] because they hear about how awful court is and how long you have to wait to go to court. You can't live your life with it in the back of your mind."

And she says that minimal sentences like the one in her case nowhere near match the trauma experienced by victims. "I don’t think jail has the crippling effect on the perpetrators that sexual assault has on its victims," she says.

"At the moment it’s a legal system, it's not a justice system.

"You don’t get justice in court."

WHY THE RECENTLY FILED CHILD RAPE CASE AGAINST DONALD TRUMP SHOULDN’T BE IGNORED

Did you know that child abuse, rape, and pedophilia are some of the biggest problems that plague the financial elite? There are some very powerful people engaged in what seems to be ritualistic child abuse — whether it be against people in Hollywood, the military, intelligence agencies, or politics, year after year countless lawsuits are filed. Two examples we’ve written about in the recent past involved Hollywood child superstars Elijah Wood and Corey Feldman, who are just two of many stars to speak out against Hollywood pedophilia.

There are countless examples of stars and other high profile figures being accused of sexual crimes, which is why it comes as no surprise to many that Donald Trump has recently come under fire. Thefederal lawsuit has been filed by an anonymous “Jane Doe,” who is accusing him of raping her in 1994 when she was thirteen years old.

This is not to say he is guilty, he has never been found gww, should have been the one who took my virginity, not Defendant Trump . . .

Another statement, made by the also anonymous Tiffany Doe, who was Mr. Epstein’s “party planner” from 1991-2000, is equally as shocking:

Defendant Trump stated that I shouldn’t ever say anything if I didn’t want to disappear like Maria, a 12-year-old female that was forced to be involved in the third incident with Defendant Trump and that I had not seen since that third incident, and that he was capable of having my whole family killed.

She claims that her job was to lure attractive children into attending these parties. She also says she “witnessed the plaintiff being forced to perform various sexual acts with Donald J. Trump and Mr. Epstein. Both Mr. Trump and Mr. Epstein were advised that she was 13 years old.” 

Mer Epstein’s sexual crimes are well documented, as is Mr. Trump’s relationship with him, which makes this so interesting. Mr. Trump told a reporter a few years ago: “I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy. He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it, Jeffrey enjoys his social life.”

It’s also not the first time that Trump has been accused of a sexual crime. In 1989, Donald Trump’s first wife, Ivanna, accused him of attacking her, ripping out her hair, and forcibly penetrating her without consent.

In 1997, a then 34 year old business acquaintance, Jill Harth, filed a lawsuit for multiple instances of attempted rape, claiming that Trump forced her into a bedroom where he kissed, fondled, and restrained her from leaving against her will.

The list of accusations goes on and on, but in all cases Trump has always denied the allegations. And as is so often the case, money seems able to settle any dispute.

According to Lisa Bloom:

Virtually every settlement of a case involving a high profile person paying money to a former spouse – or anyone – requires the person receiving the money to agree in writing to ironclad nondisparagement and confidentiality. In plain English: you promise to be quiet and not say anything bad about the party paying you money. This has been the case in hundreds of settlement agreements I have worked on over the years. Ms. Trump was almost certainly contractually prohibited after she signed from saying anything negative about Mr. Trump. And it is also common to attempt to “cure” prior negative statements with new agreed-to language – like, I didn’t mean it literally. (You didn’t mean forcible penetration literally?)

The main reason I wanted to bring attention to this case is to show that these are not isolated incidents. The reality is, ritualistic pedophile rings exist, and they are organized and run by a small group of elite and powerful people.

Below is a video of Ted Gunderson and a woman by the name of  Brice Taylor. Before his passing he was an FBI special agent, holding the head position at multiple offices throughout the United States, in charge of hundreds of people and FBI personnel.

The information in the video below is intense, but if you are looking for ‘proof’ or more information on this type of thing, it’s a good place to start to see just how much of a problem it is, and how little mainstream media covers it.

Ted was outspoken about elite pedophile rings among powerful people, ranging from Hollywood all the way to the CIA…

Report on sexual exploitation

A report has lifted the lid on the sexual exploitation of at least 1,400 children in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013, along with "blatant" collective failures to deal with the issue.

One victim, who had been groomed from the age of 12 and was raped for the first time when she was 13, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme her harrowing story.

She says she was raped "once a week, every week" until she was 15, that police "lost" clothing she had given to them as evidence and that she had feared for her family's safety.

"Emma" [not her real name], now aged 24, says she was 12 when she was first approached by a group of young men in an arcade in Rotherham. The boys, who she says were of "school age", began talking to her and struck up a friendship with her.

'Soft drugs'

What she did not realise at the time was that she was being groomed for sexual abuse, she says.

The grooming went on for about a year, during which time she began going to Rotherham town centre where she was introduced to "grown men".

"They started introducing alcohol and soft drugs to me and then, when I was 13, I was sexually exploited by them," she says.

"Up until this point they had never tried to touch me, they had not made me ever feel uncomfortable or ever feel unsafe or that they could harm me.

"I trusted them, they were my friends as I saw it, until one night my main perpetrator raped me, quite brutally as well, in front of a number of people.

"From then on I would get raped once a week, every week."

'Different men'

She says her abusers began to force her to have sex with "whoever wanted to come and have sex with me".

Speaking to BBC Panorama, she tells of one incident when she was taken to a flat, locked inside a bedroom and repeatedly raped by different men.

"I just had to sit and wait until they sent man after man in and whatever they wanted, I had to give them," she says.

"I can remember begging one of the perpetrators who I knew quite well not to send anybody else into that room and to just let me go home and them just laughing at me, telling me to get up and basically just get on with it."

Charges dropped

She says she reported her abuse to the police "three months after my sexual exploitation started".

Emma says she saved the clothes she had been wearing during the attacks and handed the items to police as evidence. "They lost the clothing, so there was no evidence," she says.

After that, Emma says she was told it was "my word against his" and that the case "probably wouldn't result in a conviction, or even get to court".

At the same time, she says, her family were being threatened and intimidated.

"The men were parking outside my house, they were threatening my family, they were ringing my house phone - and they were quite dangerous men as well," she adds.

"The police said they couldn't offer any protection, so because of that I decided to drop the charges."

Mum rape threat

She says: "I was 13 at that point and my sexual exploitation went on until I was 15."

Her mum was the first person she told about what was happening but even then her family were unable to stop the abuse.

"My parents went to the relevant services, they went to the people who should have been there to help and protect [me], because as a family we couldn't stop these people," she says.

Emma says her parents even locked her up - "as many other parents" of victims had done - but threats from the men left her fearing for her family's safety.

"I had no choice really, because they used to threaten to get my mum and rape my mum," she says.

"So in my mind, as a 13 or 14-year-old, it was 'Well if I didn't go out and see them they are going to get my mum and are going to rape her'.

Parents 'saved me'

"They gang raped me, so what stops them from doing that to my mum?

"They used to follow my mum because they used to know when she went shopping, what time she had been shopping, where she had gone."

Emma adds: "I look back at it now - I was a child, these were adult men who were very, very dangerous, very nasty, they knew everything about me because in the grooming process I had told them everything.

"So they knew all about my family, they knew where we lived, they knew everything.

"I knew nothing about them apart from their nicknames."

In the end she says her parents decided the only way to stop the abuse was to move her "out of the country".

"That was the decision that saved my life," she says.

Abusers 'still free'

Emma says she was away from the UK until she was 17, and when she returned she got "fantastic" help from a psychologist and a psychiatrist.

"When I started talking to them, what I did find is that I wasn't the only child who had sat in their offices with this complaint against these men," she says.

But she says her attackers remain at large.

"I still see them, they still walk about the streets," she says.

"My way of dealing with that is just completely blanking out that they're there, but it just maddens me and sickens me that they've destroyed so many lives."

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Women’s Aid welcomes new report from the Women and Equalities Committee

 Polly Neate, Chief Executive of Women’s Aid, said:

“We welcome the Women and Equalities Committee Report on sexual harassment and violence in schools. We particularly welcome the recommendation that sex and relationships education be made a statutory part of the national curriculum. At Women’s Aid, we know that SRE is an essential part of any strategy to prevent domestic and sexual violence. Young women aged between 16 and 24 are the most likely to experience domestic abuse, and we believe that age-appropriate SRE should be provided from the start of primary school until the end of full-time education. If we are ever to prevent domestic abuse, we must recognise that its roots are in inequality between men and women and the gender roles that are accepted and promoted everywhere we look. Violence against women and girls is rooted in misogyny; education is vital in order to unpick these attitudes and challenge our victim-blaming culture.

“Sex and relationships education can only be successful if our schools are safe for girls, free from abuse and sexual harassment – remember, if girls are not safe at school their human rights are being infringed. We must give young people the tools to recognise when abuse is happening and know where to get help. Our campaignLove Don’t Feel Bad is a useful tool for this. We also run Safer Futures, a national project that builds networks between local schools, specialist domestic abuse services and Local Authorities to ensure that healthy relationships education is delivered responsibly and effectively. In addition, our federation of around 220 local specialist domestic abuse organisations has a wealth of experience in supporting schools to deliver sex and relationships education, backed up with support for children and young people who are experiencing abuse themselves, or who live in homes where abuse is taking place. This whole-school approach is essential. We need the government to make this a national priority – and act as a matter of urgency.”

‘I’ll never forget the looks he gave me. I knew he wanted me dead’

A woman living in a women’s refuge in Tallaght tells her story and appeals to the government to prevent its closure.

Anonymous

I’LL NEVER FORGET the looks. When I think of them I get goosebumps and shivers down my back. I knew he wanted me dead. I didn’t know what was worse, his death stares radiating right into me or the thick tense atmosphere in the house that worsened every time he entered a room.

I lived with my in-laws and gave all my wages to my husband. I had no say in how the house was ran, but I sure as hell had to clean for them. I couldn’t say no – not after broken ribs, or bleeding kidneys or being dragged around the kitchen floor by my ankles.

Not after being locked in my bedroom or being taken out of my job, and most definitely not after having my husband wipe his bottom on me instead of using toilet roll.

Picking up on the atmosphere

I wasn’t allowed hug my girls and their dirty nappies were shoved in my face. If I asked for money for nappies there was trouble. My two girls were always quick to pick up on the atmosphere. They knew when to walk on eggshells and when they could laugh.

For the love of my girls I had to get out. I knew it would destroy them too – if it wasn’t already beginning to do so.

I’m a mother and I’m supposed to be able to look after my girls. I just wanted them to have a safe home. The word home creates the image of warmth, comfort, safety, a haven.

When I left my fifteen year abusive marriage, my girls and I became homeless. I would watch people in the queue at the shops, hearing the mothers say to their girls ‘we’re going home now’.

I would think how wonderful that must feel. Our most basic need – a place to call home had become an untouchable luxury.

I would want to scream ‘can anybody help me look after my babies, can somebody help me get up and make me strong again because the monster I lived with had destroyed me. I’m so broken, I can’t fix myself on my own’.

I am extremely lucky

Somebody out there did hear my cries and eventually I was extremely lucky to be welcomed here at the women’s refuge, Cuan Alainn.

It means safe harbor and that’s exactly what it is. I wouldn’t have made it this far if it wasn’t for Cuan Alainn. The staff, their expertise, the way they helped me develop coping skills, build my confidence, has been so empowering. I’ve also learnt here that I cannot look after my girls if I don’t look after myself too.

When I first came to the refuge there wasn’t an hour that went by when I didn’t break down and cry or jump with fright at the sound of a phone ringing or a door closing. I felt exhausted from just trying to stay afloat to try save myself from drowning. When women come here, we’re broken, we need places like this so we can start to rebuild ourselves.

Nothing came close to the feeling of knowing the two things I treasured and loved most in my life, my daughters, were safe in a new home with me their mother. Those words still bring tears to my eyes. The idea of having a safe home – it sounds so beautiful. The TV playing softly in the background, the sound of my girls gently breathing every now and then a little laughter.

Closure is a disaster – where will women go?

But now it’s being taken away from us again. The idea that CuanAlainn will close is beyond belief again. Where do women like me and my girls go? What about other women who, like me, need a lifeline to get away from danger?

I am writing this to show James Reilly that women like me need Cuan Alainn. Without it our lives are at risk, our children are at risk and it’s either go back or be on the streets.

What do I tell my girls when they look up at me and say, ‘Mammy, where are we going to live?’ Right now, I just gently say, ‘I’m so sorry chicken, but Mammy doesn’t know’. ‘Okay Ma,’ they sigh, and I recognise the same anxious looks on their faces they had before we came here.

This contributor wishes to remain anonymous. She lives in Cuan Alainn, a women’s refuge in Tallaght that provides second stage temporary housing for survivors of domestic violence. Respond housing association, who funded the service since 2012, can no longer afford to support it. It will be forced to close on the 18 December unless the government agrees to cover the €350,000 cost per year it needs in order to stay open.

Man jailed for 10 years for threatening, assaulting and raping his wife

The 42-year-old is only the third person to be convicted for marital rape since rape within a marriage was made illegal in 1990.

 

A MAN HAS been jailed for 10 years for threatening, assaulting and raping his wife as their marriage was breaking down in 2014.

Sentencing the 42-year-old in Dublin Central Criminal Court today, Justice Isobel Kennedy said the assaults were “cowardly” and “brutal”.

“The crime of rape is an attack upon the bodily and psychological integrity of a woman,” she said.

She said these attacks had taken place in the context of a marital breakdown but said this did not excuse or justify his conduct.

“It was terrible for his wife,” she said.

She was in the impossible position in ensuring her son had access to his father while protecting herself against him.

The 42-year-old accused is only the third person to be convicted for marital rape since rape within a marriage was made illegal in 1990.

Threats

In June at the Central Criminal Court a jury of 11 men and one woman convicted him of raping his wife in their home in May, 2014 and of threatening to cut her face. He was also convicted of threatening to kill the woman the next day over the phone.

He had previously pleaded guilty to attempting to cause serious harm to the woman and of assaulting her mother on 7 August 2014 during the hammer attack outside the mother’s Dublin home.

The judge imposed a sentence of 12 years for the count of rape but suspended the final two years. She imposed lesser sentences for the other counts, but ordered they run concurrently with the rape sentence.

The victim’s ordeal began at the start of 2014 when she told her husband of nine years that she wanted a separation.

Marriage under strain

Their marriage had been under strain for some time. The man was jealous of the woman’s successful career and believed she wasn’t spending enough time at home. He was also unhappy she was still breastfeeding their child up to two years of age.

Mary Rose Gearty SC, prosecuting said he took the proposed separation “very badly”.

On one occasion the woman returned home to find the man had poured petrol over the living room where he sat smoking cigarettes as their child slept upstairs.

On 25 May 2014 they were arguing when he picked up a carving knife and threatened to cut her face open. He then told her “right, upstairs”.

He followed her up and said gardaí would never arrive on time if she called them.

He raped her in the spare bedroom while telling her to open her eyes and insisting they weren’t separating.

The next day she went to the Family Court and obtained an interim barring order.

She did not disclose the rape until five months later because she couldn’t bring herself to admit it, she said.

Shortly after she obtained the barring order, the man rang her at her parent’s home and told her she was dead.

In the following weeks, the woman realised her husband was tracking her phone using an app and knew her location at all times. On one day in early June he followed her to her work, a supermarket and their son’s crèche and said that next time he would bring a hammer.

On 6 August he rang her at home and said he was going to “end things tonight”. The next day he showed up at her parent’s house demanding to see their son.

The woman and her mother refused to let him in. He said he had a present for the boy in his car and returned with a hammer.

He attacked both women before passers-by intervened. His wife lost consciousness at one stage and was covered in blood afterwards. Both victims suffered lacerations.

A passer-by set his dog on the accused who swung the hammer at them. The dog owner then chased the accused away and gardaí found him nearby hiding behind a jeep.

Gearty said at one stage the accused blamed “black magic” and “the occult” for the hammer attack. He said during interview it was out of character for him.

‘Suffered greatly’

Padraig Dwyer SC, defending, said his client will find prison very difficult as a foreign national who is far away from his family. He said the accused was going through a depressive episode at the time and suffered greatly by being separated from his son.

Last week the woman read a powerful victim impact report to the court where she said the attacks will stay with her forever.

“I knew that night there was nothing I could do to stop him,” she said, speaking of the rape.

The rape left me with a complete sense of powerlessness , like everything of myself had been taken away from me.

“I felt so broken and for a long time, angry with myself for what I saw as letting it happen,” she said.

Referring to the hammer attack in August 2014, she said that before becoming unconscious she feared that she was going to be murdered in front of her son after seeing the “cold determination and focus” of her husband.

“I will never forget, before I went unconscious, looking down at the door of the room where (my son) was sleeping and thinking, ‘Whatever happens now, don’t come out, don’t see this,’” she said.

I believed in that moment I was going to die. I know if it wasn’t for the actions of (a passer-by) I may not be alive.

“All my family will be forever grateful to him.”

Her husband had his barrister read a letter of apology to the court for the hammer attack but made no reference to the rape or other charges. He said he was “utterly reckless” and blamed the “alienation, humiliation and emasculation” he said he suffered during the breakdown of their relationship.

Dwyer SC said his client was judged to be at a low risk of committing future violence and that he was ashamed of his actions.

Ms Gearty contested this, saying the accused had made phone calls from prison to his wife which showed he “does not have a positive attitude towards her”. The court heard she is terrified of him getting out of prison.

Woman raped by husband: “There was nothing I could do to stop him”