Court hears how man jailed for abducting and raping Spanish student had 'interrupted upbringing'

The 25-year-old man who abducted a teenage Spanish student from Dublin city centre and raped her repeatedly over a 21-hour period had a 'very very difficult and interrupted upbringing', a court has heard.

Court hears how man jailed for abducting and raping Spanish student had 'interrupted upbringing'

Declan Brennan

The 25-year-old man who abducted a teenage Spanish student from Dublin city centre and raped her repeatedly over a 21-hour period had a 'very very difficult and interrupted upbringing', a court has heard.

Eoin Berkeley of Hampton Wood Way, Finglas, Dublin, who admitted raping the girl at the Irish Glass Bottle Company site, Pigeon House Road on three occasions between July 15 and 16, 2017 was today sentenced to 14 years.

During mitigation the court heard that when gardaí arrested Eoin Berkeley they found it difficult to interview him and difficult to discern fantasy from truth in what he was saying.

He told them that everybody in his family was bipolar and reported seeing things that weren't there and making friends with things that weren't there, the court heard.

He was taking 20mg of Denzapine, an anti-psychotic drug, yet spent most of his days hanging around a public place known as “the benches” near Dame St in Dublin city centre.

There he and other vagrant people would congregate and get into fights, the court heard. He was well known to gardaí working in the city and often presented in conditions that caused concern for his mental health.

At one point he walked around the city dressed in a “raccoon onesie” which his barrister Michael Bowman SC described as “bizarre behaviour”.

Mr Bowman outlined a life beset by a “very very difficult and interrupted upbringing”. He said alcohol was a considerable feature of his family life and his mother had considerable difficulties of a psychological nature which were compounded by alcohol.

She knew she couldn't look after him and put him into foster care. By the age of four he was placed permanently in HSE care. Reports from that time showed that by the age of six he was doing well in that environment.

That same year, in 1999, his natural father died. Berkeley also lost his foster father, who he had developed a close bond with, when the foster home marriage broke down.

There were concerns as to how Berkeley was developing and he had contact with a significant number of agencies. He was clinically diagnosed at age of eight with a speech and language impairment and later with a developmental language disorder.

His incapacity to communicate led to him becoming defensive and this affected his progress in school, his lawyers told the court.

Extreme violence and 'a period of flux'

By the age of 12 his behavioural problems had gotten worse and he was taken out of school for extreme violence. He never went back to school and never achieved any formal qualifications.

The records show that by the age of 14 his foster family situation also broke down because he was presenting as being difficult to manage. He was institutionalised at Ballydowd, a facility to deal with unruly individuals.

He reported as having no control over himself during his teenage years. On leaving Ballydowd he began “a period of flux”, his lawyers said, where he moved between an “unconventional” family home and homelessness.

There were some accounts that during his difficult upbringing Berkeley had been exposed to sexually abusive behaviour, Mr Bowman said.

Mr Justice White said he had to take all this background into consideration in sentencing Berkeley for his horrific crimes.

He said Berkeley's development was significantly compromised with separation from attachment figures and possible sexual abuse experiences.

The judge noted that he presented to doctors as aggressive and agitated and threatened one doctor with assault.

His counsel told the court that a month before carrying out the abduction and rape, a garda inspector in the Dublin city area directed Berkeley's detention under the Mental Health Act. Under the Act he was seen by a doctor who deemed him fit to be released.

Two days later Berkeley's brother rang a garda station and said Berkeley needed to be detained under the Act. Gardaí told him there was no basis for his detention and advised that Berkeley seek medical care.

Earlier: Man who abducted Spanish student and raped her repeatedly gets 14 years

A 25-year-old man who abducted a teenage Spanish student from Dublin city centre and raped her repeatedly over a 21-hour period has been jailed for 14 years.

Eoin Berkeley of Hampton Wood Way, Finglas, Dublin, admitted raping the girl at the Irish Glass Bottle Company site, Pigeon House Road on three occasions between July 15 and 16, 2017.

This morning Mr Justice Michael White said that there 19 incidents of violence or threats of violence during the ordeal. He said the crimes were premeditated and the nature of the rapes were particularly degrading.

He said Berkeley's threats to kill the victim were blood-curdling. He imposed concurrent sentences of 14 years for each rape offence and said he was taking into consideration the threats to kill, sexual assaults and false imprisonment.

He backdated the sentence to July 31, 2017, when Berkeley went into custody. There was no reaction from Berkeley to the sentence.

The then 18-year-old student, described as naïve and shy, had come to Ireland two weeks earlier to improve her English and was staying with a host family in Dublin.

Eoin Berkeley
Eoin Berkeley

She was a day out in the city centre on a Saturday afternoon when she met Berkeley who told her he lived on the beach and invited her to see where he lived. She agreed and walked with him to a derelict site near Sandymount where he had a number of tents pitched.

Once inside the tent his mood changed, he pushed her to the ground and grabbed her hands. She told him he was hurting her but he laughed and told her she was stupid and that he had “done this before”.

She left the tent but Berkeley dragged her back in. He tied her hands up behind her back using a dog leash and told her he had previously killed six people and was going to kill her.

He repeatedly tried to strangle her and at one point he picked up a small saw and told her that if she didn't stop struggling he would cut her hands off.

She begged him to kill her in the least painful way possible and he gave her some tablets and he then put some black gloves on. She took the tablets and fell down and he began abusing her.

Over the hours that followed Berkeley raped the woman on three separate occasions. On the Sunday he told her he wasn't going to kill her until Monday.

He told her that if she tried to run away he would throw a rock at her head. He told her that he had stopped having feelings about people since the age of 10 and said he had cut the paws off household pets.

The victim escaped when Berkeley took her down to the beach and he fell asleep. In the meantime, the family she was staying with in Dublin and her parents in Spain had raised the alarm when she failed to make contact on Saturday evening.

On escaping the victim rang her father, telling him she was running from a man and told him: “I've been kidnapped. I'm going to be killed”. Her father told the court this was the worst phonecall a father could ever get.

The victim told gardaí that she was terrified and knew if she tried to escape she had to be successful.

“I knew that I would have only one real chance to escape,” she said.

"He had total control of my life over these days. I was terrified."

The court heard that medical tests found morphine, codeine and cannabis present in her body after the attack. She suffered bruising to her wrist, arms, legs and neck.

In a victim impact statement read into court by counsel the woman said that she had to take medication for months after the rape in case of infections. She said she thought she was going to be killed during the attack and she is now afraid to sleep in the dark.

She said she thinks about what happened every day, saying: “I was afraid, I did not want to be afraid”.

Berkeley's 25 previous convictions include unlawful possession of knives and a realistic firearm and threatening and abusive behaviour.

After the hearing at the Central Criminal Court last week Mr Justice White adjourned sentencing to today.

He said that the victim was violated in a horrendous way. He said there was a collective sense of shame that somebody visiting Ireland had suffered in such a vile way.

Before this defence counsel, Michael Bowman SC told the court that his client went into foster care at the age of four as his mother had psychological problems which were compounded by alcohol. At the age of 14 his foster care situation broke down because of his own behavioural difficulties and he was institutionalised at Ballydowd, a facility for “unruly youths”.

Counsel said that after leaving Ballydowd he had lived in flux mostly in homelessness, often coming to garda attention in situations which caused concerns around his mental health.

A month before the kidnap and rape a garda inspector in the Dublin city area directed his detention under the Mental Health Act. He was seen by a doctor who deemed him fit to be released.

Two days later Berkeley's brother rang a garda station and said Berkeley needed to be detained under the Act. Gardaí told him there was no basis for his detention and advised that Berkeley seek medical care.

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