Man jailed for raping homeless Limerick woman in alleyway

A MAN has been jailed for eight years for raping a homeless woman in County Limerick five years ago.

Cristian Gogosiou, age 37, of Mount Kenneth Place, Limerick, had pleaded not guilty to one count of rape and one count of oral rape at a location in the county on September 26, 2019. He was convicted on both counts by a Central Criminal Court jury in Limerick earlier this year.

The court heard the woman, who cannot be named to protect her identity, was 31 and living in homeless accommodation at the time of the incident.

Detective Garda Enda Clifford told the court the woman was struggling with homelessness and addiction.

She said she encountered a man who was well-dressed with a beard and who asked her for sexual intercourse. He said he’d give her €6,000 and jewellery.

The woman said she needed to go to the toilet and went down an alley. He took out a medium-sized flick-knife and said he “would cut off her giblets.” He pushed her towards the wall and penetrated her vagina without her consent. A used condom was later found on the ground. She was brought to the Sexual Assault Treatment Unit.

It took a year to identify him, but gardai finally apprehended Gogosiou on September 16, 2016. He admitted having sex and oral sex with the woman but said she’d offered to do it for money.

In the course of the interview, he said he preyed on vulnerable women “because it was easy.” He did not accept the verdict of the jury, the court heard.

The court heard Gogosiou, who is originally from Romania, has 37 previous convictions in this jurisdiction and 12 foreign offences. The court heard the injured party did not attend court because she did not want to see Gogosiou again.

In a victim impact statement read to the court, the woman said she suffered from addiction issues at the time of the events.

She said she had been overcome by emotions and severe anxiety since the events. She thought she shouldn’t bother going to the gardai because they would not believe a homeless person.

Ms Justice Siobhan Lankford handed down a ten-year sentence and suspended the last two years, backdating it to May 23, 2022, for time spent in custody. She also placed Gogosiou on the sex offenders’ register.

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She said the aggravating factors were the use of a knife and the defence that she was doing it for money was not accepted by the jury.

The judge said she could not agree with Mr Cody’s view that the offending was in the lower range and said the aggravating factors were the vulnerability of the accused, the degrading nature of where it took place and his failure to enter a plea.

She said the offending fell into the category of a headline sentence of 12 years but reduced this to ten years based on the mitigating factors of him being a Romanian and having to serve time in an Irish prison. She also noted that he had three children, one of whom is in Romania.