A 21-year-old man, who admitted to sexually assaulting a 62-year-old woman as she walked home from bingo, has been sentenced to eight years in prison.
Liam Smith of Batt Donegan Place, Charleville also pleaded guilty to threatening to kill the woman he sexually assaulted with the intention of making her believe that he would carry out the threat to kill her.
The court was told that the woman was walking home from bingo in an area known as the Turrets, in Charleville, last September.
She was punched several times, dragged into the driveway of a house, threatened at least eight times that if she didn't stop screaming Smith would kill her.
The woman was punched again and then subjected to what the Judge Moran described as a nasty and revolting sexual assault that lasted for five minutes.
After Smith ran off, he returned and the victim thought he was going to kill her.
Smith told the court that he could not imagine what he had put the woman through.
He said he was out of control on drink and drugs and will feel nothing but remorse for the rest of his life for what he did to her.
Sentencing Smith, Judge Moran said that while the defendant had made an early plea of guilty, he could not overlook what the victim went through.
He said that Smith physically dragged and punched her, threatened to kill her and then carried out a sexual assault that came into the category of both nasty and revolting for a lady of her years.
He sentenced him to eight years on all three charges to run concurrently and reactivated a two-year suspended sentence for an earlier assault on another person to run consecutively to today's sentence.
Speaking afterwards, the victim's family said that justice had been done and they hope she can now move on with her life.
In her victim impact statement to the court, the woman said her life had been utterly changed and she is now always on her guard.
Her first and last thought every day was the sexual assault. She could not understand why he did it to her.
She said she did not feel ashamed or embarrassed at what he did to her, she did nothing wrong and she would survive but as an elderly aunt said to her, the twinkle has gone from her eyes.
