A woman who was beaten, burned, stabbed and tortured for three hours by eight men in a flat in Dublin last year has said she never knew humanity could be so cruel and will never get over the physical and psychological trauma.
The woman was abducted and tortured because of a row over missing drugs which she knew nothing about.
She was rescued when gardaí raided the flat and said in a victim impact statement today that if "the police hadn't come in that day" she was "sure" she was dead.
Five men pleaded guilty to false imprisonment and assault causing harm to the woman at Henrietta House on 26 September 2024.
They are 33-year-old Mark Keogh, his father 55-year-old Mark McMahon and 21-year-old Braxton Rice all of Henrietta House, Henrietta Place in Dublin 7, along with 21-year-old Sean Conroy of Sillogue Road in Ballymun and 22-year-old Kian Walshe of Constitution Hill in Dublin 7.
A number of other counts against each man relating to the production of articles in the course of an offence, were taken into consideration.
The sixth man and a juvenile are still before the courts.
The eighth person is not before the courts.
Detective Garda Peter Guyett told the court today that the woman and her then-partner were staying with one of the men and became aware he was holding drugs in his house.
On the day of the attack, that man and another person told her to come with them and she was put into an Audi with two other men.
She was driven to McMahon’s flat in Henrietta House where she was terrorised and tortured.
The detective said Rice began questioning the woman about a €90,000 batch of cocaine that had gone missing from the house she was staying in.
Rice accessed her Facebook account, demanded her mother's address and threatened to rape her 17-year-old daughter who was staying there.
He started hitting her across the head with a metal pole before he "lost control" and started hitting her all over her body, the court heard. McMahon held a hatchet up to her face while his son Keogh, referred to in court as 'Sparky' hit her across the head with a pole.
Conroy kicked her in the face.
While the woman was being hit and kicked, Rice burned her by heating up the head of a hammer and pressing it "over and over" against her bare legs
At one point, the woman heard the men on the phone to their "boss" who told them to "strip her off and get her into bed and bugger her".
They didn't do this but they told her a "black man" whom the woman said they referred to as "a monkey" was coming to rape her.
In text messages read out in court today, one of the men boasted to a friend that they had a "hostage" and had "cut her up", to which this unidentified man replied: "quality".
Phone video footage taken inside the flat that day was also played in court, which showed the woman bloodied and distressed and a hammer being heated up on a hob.
The woman said in her victim impact statement, which the garda read out today, that she suffered severe burns to her legs, face and hair and that she can "never get the smell out" of her own skin and body burning.
They had she said an aerosol can and a lighter and a heated hammer and the men ran at her at speed from another room and assaulted her.
"Animals wouldn’t have done what they did," she said.
"I was begging them to stop, one woman with eight men, they made me feel so helpless."
She spent five weeks in hospital undergoing skin grafts and surgery twice for injuries to her back and elbow. She also sustained a fractured skull, cheek bone and eye socket and scarring to her face and body.
"Supposedly drugs were missing," she said, "it had nothing to do with me. No matter what I said, they didn’t believe me. I was beaten, stabbed, burned, and tortured to confess to something I knew nothing about."
"I had to give up my daughter and mam's name," she said.
"They said they would get my daughter out of school and rape her, my little girl. They got my mam's home address, tortured it out of me, said they were going to her house. They said they were going to make me drink ammonia."
She said she still suffers flashbacks where she has to "live it all over again" and night terrors. She is afraid to go out, particularly at night.
"It has affected my mind, my identity," she said. "Three hours felt like three years, I burst out crying when I think about it, nothing helps.
"I will never forgive these sick human beings. I never knew humanity could be so cruel," she said. "I hope you can sleep well at night, because I can’t."
Judge Pauline Codd said the woman had been through "unimaginable trauma" and adjourned the sentencing hearing until next Wednesday, when pleas of mitigation will be heard for the five men.
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Additional reporting CCC Nuacht
