A man has been jailed for 15 years for ambushing a woman in the public toilets of a Co Cork town and subjecting her to 30 minutes of rape and sexual violence in what was described as one of the most serious cases of rape to come before the courts.
Przemyslaw Jakubowski, 36, has previous convictions for attempted rape and robbery in his native Poland and had only been in Ireland for a few months when he carried out the offences.
He was convicted of 11 counts of rape, sexual assault, false imprisonment and threats to kill in May following a 12-day trial.
The court heard he does not accept the jury's verdict.
The attack happened in the middle of the afternoon after his victim went in to use the public toilets in Kanturk while she was running errands in the town.
Mr Justice Patrick McCarthy said it was one of the most serious rape cases the court has had to deal with in the recent past.
He said were it not for the fact that Jakubowski was a foreign national, he would have imposed a sentence of between 17 and 20 years.
But he had to take into account the fact that a prison sentence could be more isolating for someone who did not have roots in this country.
The judge said he was taking into account the adverse effect the crimes had had on Jakubowski's 30-year-old victim.
He said she had been changed by what had happened and the offences had deeply scarred her and had long-term consequences.
The judge said her immediate reaction at the time had been worry for her child whom she had been due to collect.
In a victim impact statement read to the court, the woman said she had been in fear of losing her life.
She had been raped not once, not twice, she said but so many times.
She described the great difficulty she had had in sitting in the witness box during the trial while Jakubowski was only a few feet away from her.
And she spoke of the agonising wait she had had for test results to check if she had contracted any diseases.
She said she was determined to put her life back on track.
